In Pursuit Of Butterflies
by The Very Last Valkyrie
Summary: Dazzling. Dangerous. Damned. The year is 1900, and Jenny Bass is taking the city by storm. Too bad her husband has his eyes on the prize she lost him, and too bad his princess is about to be besieged. Hearts will break; heads will roll.
1. Preface

**Preface**

Every day, she knew it; he knew it. He sat in his chair with his scotch and watched the fire dance, not eating, not sleeping, not appearing to breathe as the flames sank from red to orange to yellow to black. He wasn't the normal kind of newlywed, and nor was he the normal kind of man. He slept in his wife's dressing room rather than grace her bed, and he never welcomed her presence in his study. She leant over him, cooed his name, rubbed his shoulders, but nothing about her would ever be right.

There was a harpoon between his ribs, piercing his heart, its tether stretching to another avenue where there were glass houses at which he'd once thrown stones.

She knelt like an animal and heaved, her stomach empty and yet still seeming to have more to give. She was nothing, a shadow, skin stretched over bones and eyes which found herself in the mirror and were still unsatisfied. One day, she would be something again. One day, she would walk through the glittering shards of her former hopes with her head held high.

But that day was not today. Today, she tried to starve out the secret inside and lose herself in a world of written words.

* * *

><p><strong><em>Das Pop put it best: 'I can't get enough of your love'. That is not to say that I differentiate between those who read silently, read loudly, read secretly or read blatantly, or that I'm back for reviews and favourites. I'm back because I owe them a happy ending, I owe myself a happy ending, and I think that maybe you wouldn't mind one either?<em>**


	2. Another Night On Fifth

**1. Another Night On Fifth**

Confetti and bunting littered the streets, liquor flowed freely and the doorways, alleyways and byways of New York played host to acts which made the most decadent days of the Roman empire look like a genteel garden party. The year and century had turned with as much applause and celebration as if it had achieved some great feat, and for the blessed inhabitants of Fifth Avenue, Washington Square and Gramercy Park, it did seem that there was much to be thankful for. They dressed in their best and made their way to one house or another, to drink and dance and make pleasantries with those who had no wish to hear of anything but themselves. Tonight's sacrificial lamb was Pelham D'Onsay, the half French entrepreneur with enough pink marble in his foyer alone to turn a maharajah green with envy. He was aided in that grave task by his wife May, whose manicured brows leapt up her forehead and whose jaw fell open in an impolite gasp as a pair of lauded latecomers crossed her threshold and deposited their outer wrappings.

No one could deny that the Basses were a fine couple, for all he was handsome and dark and she was pretty and fair, and besides wearing a deep scarlet gown with ruffles of black lace further describing the shape of her wrists and throat, squeezing her waist to nothing, exposing her white arms to the scrutiny of the company. She smiled sweetly, he sardonically, and they paused only momentarily to greet their hosts before sweeping into the ballroom like a maelstrom: a maelstrom of money, of light and of beauty.

Chuck took up a champagne glass and drained it, though he was already fortified by the application of the silver hip flask in his waistcoat pocket. "I won't stay at this infernal affair more than an hour, I have business to attend to." He replaced the receptacle and took up another, which was also empty within seconds. Empty; empty seemed right.

Jenny, more subtle than her new husband, nodded her head at the Hollands and then spoke from one corner of her mouth. "You mean you need to write another one of those letters begging her to let you explain, to come to you, to let you go to her. I've seen them all, Chuck, and I've seen them all return unopened." Her laughter chimed, bright and false, as if they were talking about something amusing instead of the breaking of hearts. "Blair Waldorf hasn't been seen for weeks, and that is most probably because she'd rather not see you, just as she'd rather not read your letters." She slipped her fingers casually into his slack other hand, then winced ever so slightly as it tightened painfully around hers.

"There are so many things," he murmured. "I could do to make your life miserable without divorcing you."

"But you won't, of course." She tried to turn the grip into a caress by squeezing back, but he thrust her hand away from him. "Because then, I'm afraid I'd have to tell the tale of a so-called virgin princess who opened her legs for a man she never even intended to marry not just once, but twice. Try winning her regard then – not that you have it now."

It had been some time since anything had truly touched Chuck, so his wife's jibes struck only dully. Alcohol from days upon days of drinking clouded his consciousness, and every smiling face in the room sickened him. They'd all been there, they'd all seen him drag Blair across the dance floor or hold her hand or even simply stare from across the room at the dilemma that raged both within and without him. Why did no one ask him about his choice of the suddenly splendid Jenny, whose lips had curled into a sneer as she handed out turkeys to the poor that Christmas? Why did no one ask him where that look had gone, the look that betrayed every emotion, every desire, every utter necessitation of another _her_, of that person's presence?

They didn't care.

So neither did he.

She was absent, and only she was worth his care.

Asher Hornsby was leaning over the bar, his pretty boy blue eyes slits at Chuck's approach. He'd chosen the more informal tuxedo rather than white tie, and his curved spine looked like a bracket ending a sentence.

"Hornsby."

"How is your lovely wife, Mr Bass?"

They regarded one another, hard and unyielding with neither pitying the other, only the third who bound them.

"It just happened."

"True love just happens, Chuck, and this is nothing of the sort."

Chuck didn't answer; his gaze was slanting and black, as it ever had been, hollow as it now was, stretching out across forbidden space for some shred of hope as he accused, "You've been with her." A pause, a swallow like a recoil from his next question. "How is she?"

"She's not your concern."

"All I need to know is if she's…well."

The Gamesome Gallant softened a little, damning himself for a romantic fool even as he did so. "She's well, in the way that most women are. She eats, she sleeps, she reads those ridiculous novels about queens in the middle of the desert and Cossacks." He raised his elegant chin and slipped easily into sarcasm, into anger as a result of his own recollections. "Do you know, I think she even breathes now. But you…you came, you saw, you conquered, and still you knock at her door and send those damned letters every day." His mouth twisted. "I opened one, then put it in a new envelope so you wouldn't notice my spying. You're married, and you write the things you do to the woman you played like a whore. Haven't you done enough harm?"

"Have you ever loved, Mr Hornsby? Not the light kind, the kind that God wouldn't have in his church because such a thing is too similarly divine to have a place there."

"Not that I can recall."

"You have to understand." He was a truly perfect specimen, thought Asher of Chuck Bass, though he still hated him. Cruel and idiotic and off his face, to be sure, but truly striking in a way that so many other men weren't. "I find myself addicted to a drug that I can't access. I can't buy it, I can't cultivate it, I can't find a way of getting to it. As a consequence, I become desperate for any proximity to this drug, since I can never actually take it and feel…I go to her house because I wish I could smell her perfume, but I can't. I write her letters that I wish to God I could stop writing, but I can't. I can't see Blair and apologise and tell her all the things she needs to know are still true, will always be true, so I write them down and send them. Then I can pretend she knows that I'm in Hell not seeing her, not smelling her perfume, not having her here and not having her in the day and at night and knowing that I never will, which in fact is worse than Hell. That is also worse, Mr Hornsby, that any kind of censure from you."

The journalist had thought of the tycoon as a man on fire before, and it was true. It was beyond contestation that he was blackened, charred, falling to pieces. Maybe that was the source of his attraction, the thought of a being who could burn slowly and scream aloud in his own head and still put one foot in front of the other.

Now there was pity, swathes of it, a glass of scotch placed in Chuck's hand in lieu of an olive branch. "Still," Asher said gently. "You're married now, and that was your choice, and that's not something you can turn your back on. You need to let go. She needs you to let her go."

"I believed for a short while that I could watch her love someone else, allow her to be all that she was, all that she is to me. I was prepared to let go."

"But?"

"I'm addicted – or did you not hear my noble speech?" He downed the scotch in one gulp, drowning in the flavour only fleetingly before it receded and numbness took its place in his mouth, thick and choking like cotton dust. "And that's not something I can turn my back on."

Jenny turned her head to show her cheekbones to best advantage, since the lighting was dim and the soft pall of cigarette smoke in the air had to be obscuring her famous features. She was gossiping with three Mrs Vanderbilts, all dressed in black, as she was, and with black feathers, jet pins and black pearls atop their respective coiffures. The emerald on that significant finger flashed green fire, as did the gold wedding band above it. That ring was the pride of Jenny's life, proof that natural order and birth were not everything, that cleverness and cunning could still win the day. It was true that Chuck didn't love her yet, but he would. With enough time and effort on her part, he wouldn't be able to help it. Her heart swelled with whatever it swelled with – love, lust, pride – as she touched the black diamond band in her own fair hair and smiled.

"I do believe," Mrs Adelaide Winthrop-Vanderbilt was saying, a year older and a head shorter than Mrs Jennifer Bass. "That your ring cost as much as all the Misses Wetmores' necklaces put together, Mrs Bass!"

"Oh, Adelaide, you flatterer." Jenny waved her fan coyly, only risking first names because she was illustrious enough to do so. Her full skirt rustled. "Mr Bass was far too generous in the purchase, I must say, although it's the perfect testament to our romance: he was first my childhood crush, then my guardian, and now my husband. Emeralds are the stone of constancy, you know." As well as jealousy, witchcraft, adultery, any and all. All that mattered was that she had what she wanted.

"How romantic!"

"Like in a fairytale!" Mrs Elizabeth van Curen-Vanderbilt added.

"Wonderful," sighed Mrs Agnes Yonker-Vanderbilt, toying with a strand of brown hair.

And then the whispering began.

A name.

A colour.

A brightness, almost, a brightness of sound.

Chuck had long retreated to an upstairs landing where he could be maudlin without Jenny digging in her fingernails and baiting him. Even the welcome physical pain she provided sickened him, since those nails were longer and sharper than those which had sweetly shredded his back as the lips they shared a life and a body with whimpered, shaped his name, trembled as gently as raindrops pattering against leaves. Here he had peace of a sort, pacing back and forth on rich carpets which deadened his footfalls, close to a room with many crystal decanters and intriguing portraits which toed the line between anatomical and erotic. He could only find peace in silence now, in solitude, in the places where he could pretend. She was just around the corner, she was waiting somewhere else. She was flushed from dancing, leaning her hot cheek against cool marble and expecting the arm which stole around her waist, stroking his wrist without meaning or thinking to.

Except there was no respite.

_Smash_: his empty tumbler hit the wall, because that waist could soon have been thicker, another heartbeat within, proof to the world and to her whom he loved.

_Smash_: a dainty carriage clock followed and left a mahogany sideboard bare, because his blood diamond, his prize, his penance, was locked away from the world once again and would never be accepted by that tiny, apparently powerless little hand.

Oh, for just a modicum of the power she had in that hand.

For the power to control him.

To control his emotions.

To force him to let her go.

And now there was nothing left to smash.

Chuck heard the whispers even as his wife slid up the stairs, followed by an entourage of similarly dressed others and their swains. She was undoubtedly queen of all she surveyed through simple artifice, and once he would've applauded her and taken her to bed for her shrewd slippery tongue and the way she ignored the shards of crystal sparkling on the rug.

"Don't you want to know what they're saying?"

"If I did, I would use my ears."

She pressed more scotch into his hand and he drank it without gratitude, only for respite. "You'd like it," Jenny told him. "In fact, you'd adore it. You'd catch your breath and try to run from me to catch a falling star."

"Don't tell me what to do."

"I'm not –"

"Don't tell me what I would do, then."

"Chuck –"

He stopped listening as his gut clenched tight around its noxious contents, tight around his roiling innards, tight like the steel around his chest. All around him stood the audience of some theatre show, mere spectators, but he was an actor, the lead, the ever thwarted and ever pitiable Romeo.

Blair swept through the crowds below with her face betraying no expression, a deep blue gown spreading out in every direction from her insignificantly sized waist. Winter shade had turned her hair almost to black, and it had been artfully arranged with a matching midnight coloured ribbon, adding gloss to gloss and to the glimmer of sapphires in her ears. Chuck couldn't turn away, didn't want to, though his eyes were smarting from staring and he was gripping the bannister too hard. How purely she shone in this gaudy place, showing her true worth as a star among diamonds…but she wouldn't look at him. He knew she could feel him, that the barb caught in her body was being tugged upon by the one in his, their cable stretched taut, translated as a shock to the senses and a roaring in the blood. And yet she smiled, smiled and glided into the ballroom as if he'd never been.

As if _they'd_ never been.

Jenny's hiss made Chuck start. "Wipe that ridiculous look of your face," she commanded, albeit beneath her breath. "Yes, that charming display was for your benefit. Not what you wanted to see, was it? She's still alive, and a beauty by all accounts, not wasting her time crying for you in a corner. You could bend her to your will by threatening to expose her yourself, but this time I think you'd lose her forever – though you have, haven't you, and without even trying."

A tumbler. A clock. Her skull. He would break everything. He would break anything. It was very nearly an impossible struggle to control his temper, unaided by the sheer volume of alcohol flooding his veins. For one repugnant, ecstatic moment, he imagined pushing Jenny to her death on the tiles below. He'd never hit a woman, however, and didn't intend to begin by killing one.

Especially with so many witnesses about.

"Take what you want from me," he said instead. "Every gown from every shop, every gem from every mine in the world – but don't expect me to care, and don't expect me to stop watching."

"We're married." Her pursed mouth was mutinous.

"Under duress," he returned. "And my heart is wearing blue tonight."

She would be in the ballroom now, perhaps dancing with the man she would marry, perhaps walking in the garden with him, perhaps letting him kiss her or, worse, chase white fire up her thighs beneath her skirt. He hoped to God she was happy, and at the same time, that she was burning. He was a heretic caught in the flames, stretching up to Heaven from the bowels of Hell, and the only way to save his soul was if she reached down and absolved him.

But she would be too busy waltzing with her future to waste her time on a condemned man.

The couch in Jenny's dressing room was ornate, oriental, spindly and uncomfortable.

He didn't sleep on it that night, only lay his achingly stiff spine down on the embroidered lemon silk and stared.

In the ballroom, where the giddiness of victory against time and space that was 1900 was peaking, Blair reached the comfort of Asher's outstretched and white gloved hand before her knees began to shake, hot and cold flashing her face from white to red to white and back again. He manoeuvred her into a chair with the excuse that she was still unwell, still frail to any well-meaning onlookers who inquired. They sat quietly together for a time while air was a precious commodity to Blair, and only the Gamesome Gallant was close enough to hear her whisper, "That wasn't so hard."

He laughed. "Darling girl, we ought to send you to the Pacific, not any number of men."

"I'd prefer Cuba, I hear it's lovely."

"But rough."

"I could work in a bar."

"Should you be around alcohol?"

Her eyes locked onto his, a doe's liquid, desperate eyes. "I'm not sure. I'm not even half sure. This has happened before when I've been under stress, it's more than likely that it's nothing more than anxiety."

"Or the dearest thing in the world to Chuck Bass could be carrying within her another very dear thing."

"Asher." She was not a doe when she spoke but a lady of breeding, a lady of morals, a lady of letters and lies. "Chuck ceased to care for me the very instant I foolishly gave him what he wanted. I don't read every note he sends me because I know what he wants this time. I'm under no illusions: he writes to try and seduce me again, to ask me to be his mistress, either because he wants it or because every step we've taken together had been for my torture. It was his plan to make me love him and toss me aside, as I did him. Fair is fair, and while the experience was only mildly humiliating, even mild humiliation can be enough to bring on the physical symptoms I've been experiencing."

"You made love with him, Blair."

"He fucked me," Blair said harshly. "For pleasure and for sport, and my body demonstrates nothing to the contrary."

He had seen her body. He was glad _he_ had seen it, and no other, glad that Dorota had sent for him and Serena to pull her Miss Blair from the floor of the greenhouse and, irreverent of propriety, bathe her and wrap her up in sheets as if she had a fever rather than a broken heart. He'd respectfully averted his gaze as Serena salved bites which could have been tender or vicious for all they knew, then brushed her long silky hair until it crackled, braided it for her, carried her to bed. Blair's grave but glorious friend had slept beside her beneath enough heavy counterpanes to drive out even the deadliest of afflictions, while Asher had lain his weary head on the rug by the fireplace, a rug covered with scorch marks and torn clothing. He'd been there when she'd vomited for the first time, though her stomach was empty, taking it not as a mark of any delicate condition but of disgust at him, at herself, at their love. He knew full well she loved Chuck still, as did she. But love, unlike money or power, could change nothing.

But the result of one night of love might prove her undoing.

Retrieving two miserly measures of champagne from a server, he tried, "When is your mother returning from Paris?"

"She isn't. I believe she keeps a permanent residence there now, although her letters are mostly to do with the house here. Dismiss so-and-so, dock the wages of so-and-so, send my bills to someone called Mr Rose."

"You're not alone, dear girl." Asher always kissed the same way, Blair noted, as if he were pressing his lips to porcelain instead of her still tender knuckles. She'd destroyed things, irreplaceable things, and her hands had bled. "If you were thinking that was the case. Serena plans to move indefinitely into one of your spare rooms; it isn't wise for a young lady to live alone. I only wish I could join you. The new year would've been so gay in our company without the need to go out and make nice with people we have no interest in."

"I like people," Blair protested perfunctorily.

"You loathe people."

"You're right, I do."

"So why be shy?"

The brilliants in her earlobes were dazzling to the eye as they swung, as her gown rose and fell like a wave with each exhalation. Her consummate showmanship was almost more impressive than the strength of her spine, such fortitude as prompted her to reply, "Because they must believe nothing has changed. They, the great 'they' who control our destinies, must consider me as desirable in temperament and family and face, even, as I ever was. I can't shut myself anyway forever, since that would be proof that someone bested me. I'd rather be out here so they can slither around the truth before me than inside where the likes of…of Jenny Bass and her ilk can speak it without my hearing."

"He doesn't love her."

"I don't care."

"You do."

"I can't care," she retorted, and returned her untouched glass to its tray.

_Waldorf Mansion, Fifth Avenue  
>1899<em>

"_Blair…_"

_She didn't lift her head from the tiles. Her fingers dug into the gaps between, nails cracked and stinging, yet she felt nothing. Nothing was so lovely, so peaceful as these hours of grey amongst screaming red. 'Nothing' was such a wonderful concept. She had nothing, so she could lose nothing. Perfect._

"_How many mornings has it been…do you know when she…the very worst thing…_"

_They talked, and she didn't listen. This grey was so wonderful, so soothing, and how she longed to sleep again. The red came and she raged rather than resting, and then the days came when she pulled the covers over her head and ignored them, but they'd taken to slapping her awake when she did it too often. They'd stopped giving her laudanum too, which wasn't fair, because laudanum dreams were pretty dreams and golden rather than grey._

_Dorota told them things._

_Dorota told them things that made no sense._

_Serena sank to the floor at her side, all full linen skirt and sombre striped shirtwaist. _"_B. B, listen to me._"

_She listened._

"_Blair, you might…you could be_…_you may well be in the family way._"

_But she didn't hear._

_When she came to herself again, it seemed as if this was her cross to bear. The nausea, the agony as her chest was laced high every morning, the way even the scent of food made the room spin. She was as slender as she'd ever been, and still she stared at her abdomen as if waiting for it to betray her – as it had betrayed her when her father died, when Chuck left, when Chuck came and left again after he'd saddled her and broken her back._

_They said she had a glow, that it was a sign._

_All any glow was a sign of the pyre she was bound to, the fires being set beneath her feet._

Blair fixed her gaze upon Asher's, impenetrable brown into tender baby blue, then on the sea of skirts that surrounded her. She'd dressed in the colours of the Blessed Virgin and lit candles, for God's sake, for all religion and superstition were the prerogative of the lower classes. Cold Fabergé blue, on the other hand, marked her from across the room, signalling her with the flash of an emerald and a plain gold band that was round for eternity and unadorned for truth.

_With all my heart._

_I love you._

_You're mine._

But he'd taken this girl to his bed, to the altar, to the edge of a bright new future in which Blair didn't even merit the role of mezzo soprano.

"I loved you too," she whispered, disregarding the tense as nausea turned her over, as something rebelled inside.

Jenny smiled still wider as Blair bolted upright and rushed for the garden doors.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Your response has been overwhelming, on here, on Formspring and on Tumblr, so my love to you all. Thanks to:<strong>_** Playingwithfire, MegamiTenchi, charoulla, Blood Red Kiss of Death, We Want a Chair Baby, LovelyAmanda, BCBass, purple-passionate, nonnie3201, Lalai, SaturnineSunshine, Krazy Once, avrilk, love sold in the evening, flipped, SassySuzy84, callmebluetoo, fiona249,**** Maudie, King for a day Princess by dawn, Cornelia B, Stella296, BeautifullyExcruciatingLove, Lori2279, fleurdautomne, ggloverxx19, Kate2008, teddy bear, bla-bl-bl, pure-simple-adoration, aliceeeebeth, thegoodgossipgirl, blair4eva, xoxogg4lifexoxo****, drewiswickedcool, Infinitywr, bcbass, L, themusejane, jsta, wonderment86, CuriousBlonde _and _thepluot. _A better welcome back I could not imagine._**_**  
><strong>_


	3. Roman Triumph

**2. Roman Triumph**

She liked to walk through each room every day, though the process took an hour at least.

Ballroom.

Dining room.

Drawing room.

Parlour.

Lesser parlour.

Lesser drawing room.

Lesser ballroom.

Informal dining room.

Blue room.

Green room.

Library.

Red room.

Jenny didn't know if she liked the red room best, or what about it spoke to her. The walls were thick with curlicues and carved cornucopias to wish her fertility in the days to come, sending a spiral of lush and spilt-skinned pomegranates tumbling over the mantelpiece and down to the hearth, frozen in the fragrant sandalwood she'd had imported to make her house a home with more than Oriental splendour. The fireplace was red marble, glossy and smooth; she ran her fingers over it and adored the slippery texture. It matched the texture of her gown, golden silk this morning, though she was expecting no one and no one was around to admire her. Silken too were the rugs beneath her feet, crimson and scarlet and cerise with an overstitched pattern of twining black fronds. The red room appeared to have been drenched in wine, and this illusion was furthered by the many rows of burgundy and claret on the bookshelves – never to be tasted, only to be seen.

A door in the far corner led directly to Chuck's study, and opening it could have one of two outcomes: he would either throw her out immediately, or be too drunk to realise she was there for a moment or two and throw her out after that. This was, of course, crippling, but hadn't she vowed to do whatever was necessary to make him love her?

Even if that did mean more than a few rejections.

With a glance cast back towards the mantel mirror to make sure her lemon-treated coiffure was still in place, Jenny pressed silently down on the door handle and pushed, abandoning the heady scent of sandalwood for liquor, tobacco and the mustiness of old books. She'd had no power over what went into Chuck's study, and it looked as if it had been there for years rather than months. Bookcases ate up every wall, towering to the ceiling, obscuring its rococo friezes and weeping angels. He'd insisted on buying the desk from his suite at the Waldorf-Astoria, and Jenny knew from experience that the drawers were kept locked. There were wingback chairs before the fireplace, cracked, supple leather, and between them a small coffee table which at the best of times held two bottles of scotch and a case of cigars. At worst, there would be brown or white powder. A blood spotted handkerchief. A black velvet box. At present, grey trousered legs extended from one of the armchairs, but he was observing the fire and she couldn't see his face. Her entrance hadn't even prompted the movement of one eyelid.

"Chuck."

"Out."

"It's a beautiful day," she told him crisply, advancing across the floor and flinging open one heavy purple drape because she knew full well how he hated it. "You need to stop sulking like a child and begin acting like the man I chose to marry."

"Why?" He was visible from this angle, a caged lion with one firm hand wrapped around a tumbler and the other lying useless across the chair arm. He was crumpled, rumpled, his hair a little too long and beginning to flirt with his collar. Why did he always have to be so disarming? "I don't recall choosing to marry you, so I'll be the man who didn't choose to marry you and stay here. Who knows, maybe I'll stir myself enough to write one of those letters you read to remind yourself how much I don't care about you."

Then she tried for spite. "The company seems to be thriving on its own, so your laxity will soon be clear to everyone we care about."

"I already lost the only thing I cared about." Shards of his own mantel mirror littered the empty fireplace; Jenny fancied she could spy her own reflection in one silvery sliver. "They can have everything else. If we're poor, you'll be where you're supposed to be, and the despair I find in your companionship will soon be clear to everyone _you_ care about."

"One day," she whispered. "One day, you'll care about me."

His head lolled to one side as he met her look directly for the first time, and those dark exotic eyes locked with hers. His jaw was rough and his gaze was bloodshot, but there was still more than enough of the man left in the mess to be cruel. "No," said Chuck softly. "No, my dear wife, I will never care about you, no matter what torture – other than your presence – you may visit upon me. You may roll me out for important occasions like a handmade carpet, but the sole reason I haven't bankrupted us purely to torment you is that it would take us away from each other."

They both knew which 'us' he was referring to.

His wife's lips pulled back over her teeth in an almost feral smile. "And do you know the sole reason I haven't bankrupted us, my love? Because the closer you are to her and the further away you feel, the sooner you'll realise that the two of you were never meant to be. You and I are the future. Blair Waldorf is the past."

"But I don't and will never love you," replied her husband. "So I take pleasure from the fact that we're both in Purgatory. Now get out. If there are any engagements we must keep today, I'll require at least moderate inebriation before I can pretend to tolerate the hanging all over me you do to impress your sycophants."

"What if I want to touch you?"

"I don't want to be touched."

"Chuck." Jenny's tone tempered to a purr, the tiger regressing to a kitten. She draped her arms around his neck over the back of the chair, hands spread wide to caress every part of his chest. His heart beat dully, as if she weren't there. "Please." One finger slipped inside the collar of his shirt, loosening the stiff fabric and stroking with calculated delicacy. "Be with me."

He encircled her wrists and held them before him, inspecting the ethereal blue veins that bulged where the muscles stretched.

"Jenny."

"Yes, darling?"

"Get out."

_**~#~**_

Mornings had a strange new ritual for Blair, one that she didn't enjoy but could hardly escape from. She woke once at dawn in a flop sweat, her pulse racing with no idea what she'd dreamed or if it had frightened her, then sunk into a deeper, more draining sleep for the few hours before she had to get up to vomit. She was neat about it, as a lady ought to be, sometimes even rousing herself early to lie still and wake for her stomach to cramp. Then she'd pull a shawl around her shoulders, walk calmly to the bathroom and lock the door. For Blair, the consequences of these actions hadn't quite sunk in yet, especially since she herself didn't believe them. If they'd created a life in amongst all that joy and desperation, surely she would know it? How could she be expecting, when he'd counterfeited every emotion they'd shared?

One cramp, the familiar squeezing sensation of compression and release.

Another.

Another.

Blair pulled her wrapper towards her and swung her legs off the bed, only noting the heaviness to her nightgown when she was standing up proper. It was a pretty thing, rose pink edged with Brussels lace…and it was stained crimson right in the juncture between her legs.

There was no mass, no evidence of an expulsion. Not a miscarriage, then. The sickness had been her own self-loathing, her sore breasts and thighs no more than a precursor to this long delayed monthly visitor, pushed back by anger and grief. She was as fertile as ever, as free as ever, unfettered by a bond to Chuck neither of them had sought or wanted. This was him washing away. This was her pushing all traces of him out of her body and onto sheets which could be burned, though she herself was no longer burning. The world was brand new, it seemed, and Blair's for the taking.

Laughter bubbled forth from her, first merry, then higher pitched, hysterical. She crouched on the rug and forced out peal after peal which robbed her of breath and made her whoop between bouts, draining her face of colour. Serena rushed in just as she'd begun to roll back and forth, beating her fists on the floor and damning her still healing knuckles. The universe was so very clever, wasn't it, to give her the second chance she craved? To take away the thing she hadn't known she wanted? There'd been hope inside Blair when there had been something inside Blair, and now there was nothing but an empty husk that might never carry, never nourish, never birth. She hadn't even conceived of the idea of a baby with his eyes or hers, his mouth or hers, a bold or a pert nose or a strong or dainty chin. She hadn't considered that cat's gaze slanting up at her from a more innocent face, a face which moved liked hers when it was vexed or tired. The very fact that she hadn't speculated about or made plans for what she'd denied, what she now knew to be false was idiotic. If she'd grown to love it, maybe it would have been given to her.

"What would you have done?" Serena asked once the bed had been stripped and Blair was dressed neatly in a sage coloured day dress, demurely sipping a cup of tea as if nothing in the world could touch her. They sat before the fire, half a game of chess before them; all the black pieces were missing, hidden who knew where in the house.

"Done?"

"If you had been pregnant."

"Destroyed it, I suppose."

"Blair!"

"Tell me, Serena –" Blair leant across the board, and her pearl earrings swung forward quite savagely. "What kind of man will marry a woman who isn't even canny enough to take care of her own mistakes? A woman who is with child by another man, a married man, who gave her virginity to that man and waited as long as two years to sleep with him again? Every gentleman of our set knows the woman he marries is no virgin, but no one says so and he delights in the skills her lack of naiveté brings to bed."

"You would've killed Chuck's child?"

"I would've killed _my_ child." Those dark eyes flashed fire. "He was nothing more than the instigator. It would've been mine."

Serena observed her friend, the way her mouth shaped the teacup rim as ire left her expression. Then, she pressed, "Do you love him?"

"'Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom.'"

"Meaning?"

Blair sighed. "Meaning Shakespeare, sonnet one hundred and sixteen, 'let me not to the marriage of true minds' etcetera. Meaning I am suffering, Serena, because my heart is broken. And every time I think I've put a piece back in its proper place, I see the name inscribed upon it and have to smash it all over again." She rested her forehead upon upraised fingertips, shadows from the window casement scoring lines across her pale, lovely face. "I will always love him, though I love where I hate and make myself ill from loving what makes me sick. There was a part of me that really wanted to be pregnant. There was a part of me that really wanted it to be his – not because it could've been anyone else's, but because then I'd still be his, though it would've been an apple-sized creature in my womb and not me per se." A light laugh, weary, unlike the earlier hysteria left her lips. "I'll grow out of loving him, I promise. He'll grow tired of sending me letters and playing with me like a cat with a little bird, and then I'll stop fooling myself."

"Speaking of letters…" Serena reached into the pocket of her gown and withdrew an envelope twice folded over. "This came today. Shall I put it straight on the fire?"

The dark eyes didn't flash this time, only narrowed. "You think I should read it today."

"I think you should read it today."

The letter passed from fair hand to equally fair hand, the scent of honeysuckle striped across one wrist and lavender and lilac across the other. It was unfolded slowly, carefully, each crease smoothed out for procrastination's sake until it lay flat on the black and white squares, a single page marked by a shaky hand that was nearly unrecognisable.

_Dearest Blair,_

_Today I hate you. I abhor you. From the base of my spine on upwards, I loathe everything about you; everything you are. I hate you because you're in my heart, and in my head, and it's crippling to have you in both places at once. Perhaps I could carve you or myself up so we were each in one of these places, loving you and thinking of myself or vice versa. If I only thought of you and loved myself, it's possible I could be happy. I could find contentment in the life I'm bound into, since the walls of this place cost most of my first profit and my 'wife' may cost me the rest._

_You may question, as you always do, my use of the term 'wife'. What is supposed to mean more is to me a mere formality, and the ugliest word in the world. Once I considered it ugly in all case and all uses, but by placing you in conjunction with it I took pleasure from being wrong about how wrong it was, though a more arrogant boy there never was at the time of this discovery._

_It could be that your mother was right, and that forcing you to watch me build an empire would have made you regret leaving a world where empires have stood for hundreds of years. It could be, then, that you were right to turn away from me, that I was right to leave and right to return. If you believe in such things, you might consider it fate – a tragedy. It is indeed a tragedy to hold onto the pain, to sit still and rot from the not having you since the pain is all I have left. Perhaps that's why I write and come to your door. Perhaps I want to hurt you, so there is still something between us, albeit pain._

_I have always and will always love you, for all you'll condemn this to the fire and not read it, obstinate creature that you are. It would be foolish to want you to be anything other than you are._

_Wanting you, however, does offer some relief._

_Sincerely,  
>Charles Bass<em>

"And now," said Blair, with a shaky breath. "You may burn it."

_French Consulate, New York  
>1889<em>

_He didn't understand why his father had brought him to the party, or while he was sitting in the corner while a parade of young misses curtsied to the consul and pretended to understand his rapid French. Each was accompanied by a boy of about the same age, hair slicked back, many blonde with high Dutch cheekbones and haughty brows._

"_They," Bart explained below his breath. "Are your competition. They'll want to expand their businesses, marry well, invest well; you need to. That's the distinction between you and some van der Leyden whelp, Charles: they have a choice about working to achieve their ends. You don't." He smoothed his son's lapel, an oddly affectionate gesture that made the boy wriggle uncomfortably. He stared out at the world with large black eyes, his mother's eyes, and with a curl of the lip that was all Bart Bass._

"_What about her?"_

_She was a dainty doll, her long hair in braids, only just deigning to take the arm of her much shorter escort._

"_She is also your opposition."_

"_Girls don't play games."_

"_I presume they taught you to play chess?" His father inquired._

"_Yes, sir."_

"_Then you'll know that a queen is a formidable opponent." Squeezing his son's shoulder tight enough to bruise – someone had to teach the boy – he indicated the girl child now conversing fluently with the consulate, tossing her pretty head like a born and bred Paris coquette. "She'll have money, friends, all the things you don't have. She'll enrich the man she marries with these things, she'll pass them on to her children. She can poison minds against you with one word, and if she looks innocent and smiles enough then your name will be mud forever."_

"_Will I have to marry her?"_

"_You'll have to marry someone – but she must be a queen, and she must be someone you can see yourself playing against. A cunning wife has a price beyond gold and green, and a wife who sees you as a worthy opponent will make you invincible."_

"_But it doesn't have to be her spec-specifically?" His small tongue stuttered over the difficult word._

_Bart sighed. "No. It doesn't have to be her specifically."_

_She turned to go into the next room, flanked by a parent on either side._

"_Mr and Mrs Harold Waldorf present their daughter, Miss Blair Cornelia Waldorf."_

_Chuck sat on his striped damask divan and wondered about the portion of the party he would never be a part of._

It was a much older Chuck Bass who awoke with a jolt, knocking over his glass and spilling the sickly toxicity of Château d'Yquem sweet wine all over the hearthrug. The fumes rose along with the heat from a fire someone must have lit while he was dozing, filling the room with the stench of sugar and grape. Chimes informed him of the quarter hour, the heaviness of his head of how long he'd slept, the ink on this fingertips that at least he'd finished today's letter before returning to his chair and, in the absence of scotch, drinking the kind of syrup which was heinously expensive and which just so happened to be in his drinks cabinet. That might explain the dream of the china doll girl, of her Italian painting eyes and the ever so slight snub to her nose. Had his attraction to her even then begat the wildness of the here and now, or did he only remember her because it was her, she, so very Blair though she was so very young and hadn't yet learnt she could turn heads?

It had to be her.

Specifically.

His father had been wrong.

Chuck rang for his valet and was shaved worryingly close, watching as the blade flickered harmlessly over his jugular beneath Arthur's capable hand. It wouldn't do to arrive for visiting hours with a rough chin, no matter the unlikelihood of actually gaining an invitation inside. The non-hazardous nature of the razor on his chin was almost annoying as he considered that: he still felt no pain, no pressure as his face was manipulated and moved, nothing in the external since it was all in the internal and the crazed beating of his blood.

"The usual place, Mr Bass?" Arthur queried, though he was already well aware of the answer.

"The usual place, Arthur."

There was a shallow nick beneath his ear, and neither remarked upon it.

Life had come back into New York once the snow had melted, and even before that, in fact. When it was safe to skate or sledge, many a young gentleman and lady had lost all decorum skidding along the pavement and shrieking as they bowled over and very nearly fatally encountered the wheels of the carriages which swished past at top speed. Bright colour was everywhere, in full skirts, in plush muffs, in pocket squares and in fallen leaves. How strange it seemed, that one's own inner world could collapse while the world of the senses changed with the passing months as it ever had, as it ever would. It would've been nice if winter had bared its teeth forever, so those who had to mourn could do so in a city as cold as they were. Blair's house ought to have crumbled, thought Chuck, so he was a ruin visiting a ruin and not simply a ruin on his own.

Dorota answered his knock, one hand on her swollen belly. She was beyond slamming the door on him now, and seemed to have advanced from rage to scorn to pity, and pitying derision from time to time.

"Mister Chuck."

"Dorota. How are you?"

She was four months in or a little longer, and the child was proud before her with her spine curving to compensate. She placed her hands on her hips to right herself. "I have been worse. It is good not to be 'divinely proportioned' when you are caring for two, though." It was an indelicate subject, but not one she minded discussing. A married maid was very different from a single lady in that condition, or so she surmised.

"Did she get my letter?"

A sigh. "Yes, Mister Chuck, she has your letter."

"Will she return this one, do you think? Or has it been used for kindling today?"

"I have not had it back. That means she has burnt it, but not that she has read it."

"She never reads them."

"You ask too much of her." Dorota stepped out into the street proper, rocking on each foot rather than taking standard steps. "You ask Miss Blair to pretend to like you, she does it. You ask Miss Blair to stop pretending, she does it. You ask Miss Blair to love you, and then to trust you, and then there is a mess in the greenhouse like the mess you made last time."

"She tore up the peonies," murmured Chuck, as if he didn't know.

"Of course she did, _idiota__,_" the maid snapped. "You threw her away. She threw away your flowers. And still, it is not a fair trade." Her brow smoothed out, and she added, "And we have this same conversation every day, Mister Chuck, and I tell you she will not come down every day, so now is the day when you stop trying my patience and go home to your wife."

"You make better conversation than my wife."

"I have higher standards that your wife."

Chuck flinched, more from the set of her jaw than from the insult. "Yours are the correct ones," he said abruptly, then stepped smartly backwards onto the sidewalk. Fate chose that instant to let the first drop of rain fall, not Chuck, so it seemed hardly of consequence to tilt back his head and examine the leaden sky, scanning the elegant house as he did so for any sign of water on the windowpanes.

The daylight didn't touch her and so she was grey, pale grey like a gentle shadow. The three-quarter angle of her window from the street showcased the arch of her throat, a modicum of its nape, the full bloom of her rosehip bottom lip but only one side of the upper; he'd never known his sight to be so sharp. She met his gaze with an expression so quiet and empty that he almost questioned her seeing him at all, except that he was staring back at her with his own look starving and raw on the inside and as blank and bleak as hers on the bones of his face. Chuck willed Blair to see his eyes, their begging, their blazing up at her, for the man within had long been ash and the man without was no better. She couldn't and wouldn't hear his apologies, and the moment ended in a sudden flash of pale green as she withdrew from the glass, from his scrutiny, one arm wrapped firmly around her ribs and one long ringlet bouncing against her neck.

It was bitter to Blair, sweet in her mouth, bittersweet in her body. There he was as he always was, and here she was: above, beyond, and breathless at the idea of either forgetting or remembering that still image of him.

No little bird liked to be teased unto the point of death, not when the cat preened and purred throughout its persecution.

Only a masochist could love such a narcissist.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Thanks to: <strong>_**fiona249, BellaB2010, flipped, L, loveyouforever77, pure-simple-adoration, Eternally Romantic, purple-passionate, SaturnineSunshine, ParfaitCherie, KillerNewton, odyjha, lulubelle2010, Maribells, drewiswickedcool, Stella296, themusejane, Curious Blonde, Avschick33, teddy bear, dreamgurl, issabell, King for a day Princess by dawn, MegamiTenchi, abelard, blair4eva _and _thepluot. _As ever, I post weekly teasers on my Tumblr, so come by if you want a sneak peak of what IPOB is bringing you next. The link is on my profile. _**


	4. Shadows

**3. Shadows**

"A tea party?" Blair screwed up her face as she screwed up a wad of deep brown hair, pushing her lips forward into a pout. "I know I've been in social confinement, but since when do your parties not include hallucinogens?"

Serena flushed. "That was one time."

"What was that that Eric gave to me?"

"Something he picked up at school, who knows. And you have to admit you enjoyed that party."

Her friend didn't reply.

"B, you know I didn't mean that."

"It's perfectly alright. _I'm_ perfectly alright." A strand or two fell to frame her cheekbones and coincidentally exclude her expression from sight. Blair avoided her own gaze for a while longer, then inquired, "And just who is coming to this tea party? Other than everyone you know, everyone of consequence, everyone you met at the dressmakers' once and liked –"

"Isabel is in England with her lord," Serena retorted smoothly. "And Kati has gone with them in the hope of finding one, so Penelope Needhold will be upholding that set; though I'm not sure about Nelly, she loathes her sister-in-law nowadays. The lovely Miss Carr is in the very early stages of the family way –" She tarried but a second over that fateful phrase. "So her presence is anyone's guess. All the Vanderbilts and Vanderbecks and van der Leydens and van der Woodsens and van Allens. The Wetmores, the Smiths, the de Fois children. Most importantly, the very best of the Waldorfs will be there." Her skin seemed to hold a tinge of golden Newport summer all year round, and Blair smiled at their reflections in the three-way mirror and tried not to compare her own pallid limbs to the glowing arm which wound around her waist and squeezed.

"It won't be long," she said quietly. "It won't be long, S, until I can take care of myself again. Everyone questions what becomes of the lily maids of Astolat when their Lancelots find Guineveres, and the answer is simple: they heal. They grow up. They don't all die."

"You were grown up already, darling." Lily van der Woodsen swept into the room on a wave of pale fuchsia, smiling as serenely as a motherly angel as the two girls jumped. "And not so prone to this drama, drama, drama that Serena so espouses." She glided closer and took Blair's face between her two hands. "You are taking your iron tonic, aren't you?"

"It wasn't a –"

"I know what it was and what it wasn't, young lady, but you're altogether too wan and washed out for my liking. Take the iron tonic, and I'll send down to the greenhouse for something special for you for tea. Let the others get dizzy and silly on cake and comfits; you and I shall dine elegantly upon salad and regain our strength."

"Are you ill?"

"Low spirits," Lily replied portentously, then somewhat spoiled the effect with a wink. She kissed her daughter's friend twice on each cheek, and then she kissed her daughter. Everyone knew she had a new lover, but they hadn't quite worked out who it was yet. Even Serena didn't know and Eric, now back at school and far away from the intrigue, had no idea whatsoever. How low class must he be, that she wouldn't even have arrive at the opera on his arm? All the van der Woodsens lived for drama, drama, drama, Blair concluded, and this tea party would be just the place to begin a new act of her own.

They called it heartbreak, this aftermath of jagged pieces with her body wrapped around to keep them inside. The truth, however, was that she hurt in her whole body, an ache which transcended emotion and became physical, rooted in a place far deeper and darker than her heart. What if she never got over him, caught herself staring at him out of windows forever? True, she could discourse about healing and growing up and take iron tonic for the cramps in her belly and salad to settle her stomach, but around him she was just a weak little girl. Above all things, Blair abhorred weakness. She hated it in others, but most of all, she hated it in herself. She loathed the girl in the green dress, the girl who'd swayed on her feet as she met his gaze through the glass. Even the part of her that had considered wanting a child seemed pathetic in the light of another day, a day without blood and rain and the realisation of loneliness.

She wouldn't, couldn't be this way forever. She wouldn't die and float down the river to his feet.

But she would wear white for martyrdom.

For virginity.

For a soon to be bride-to-be.

_**~#~**_

…_the truth is not that either of us is particularly kind or cruel, but that the barbarism I am reduced to without you to temper the baser parts of my nature shines brighter than any spirit of charity I might yet possess…_

Chuck swore as Jenny threw a cushion at his head.

"Get up. Up!"

She was perhaps within her rights since he was in her dressing room, sprawled uncomfortably across a spindly silk covered chaise he was surprised could even take his weight. He'd been lying on his back when she entered, paper suspended above and before his eyes so he could check for any necessary additions, and now sat up and directed a glare in her direction.

"I hope you don't plan on taking off your clothes."

"Why?"

"I've already done my vomiting for this morning."

"Then you won't mind me." Her tone was brisk but her movements attempted allure as she stripped to the skin and ran for her made. Chuck loathed the very sight of her, for all she possessed the accoutrements of fashion and womanhood: he hated the sight of ribs which were visible through the translucent skin of her back, of breasts which were disproportionate to her figure by the use of unguents and a queer little doctor who visited twice a week. He hated her hair, bleached to the palest blonde by the application of lemon and peroxide, and he hated the way she made sure to draw the arch of her brows and curve of her mouth rather than risk lines by demonstrating genuine interest or joy. He hated her, in short, as much as a numb man could hate anything. It was she who kept him like a tiger in a pen, but he wouldn't give her the satisfaction of domestication.

"See something you like?"

"I never was one for peep shows," Chuck said roughly as Elise came through a door in the panelling and started upon seeing him.

"Ignore Mr Bass, Elise," Jenny instructed her maid. "He's here as a connoisseur of art, so I'd like something purple today. Purple is my husband's favourite colour, you know."

Purple was his favourite colour, but he focused doggedly upon his letter and imagined a blue ball gown and a green day dress, peonies with petals that curled soft pink like a baby's toes. There were some days when he deeply wished he'd left Blair altered irrevocably with the seed of them both growing insider her – then she'd have no choice but to make terms with him. He was aware that she would be ruined, worthless in society's terms, but then he could've claimed her and married her. As it was, the truth had dawned slowly: Jenny had sent the engagement announcement to the papers before he'd even arrived back at the hotel, certain of his capitulation. Blair had grieved for him, or else lain abed for weeks hating him, and now she was out once more and ready to take her place as queen.

She was free, and he was not, so in layman's terms, she had won.

What a strange victory that must be.

Jenny preened in blissful silence, admiring her pinched and pulled figure in a purple velvet shirtwaist and black overstitched skirt. A trail of jet beads chattered on the floorboards as she moved, and she wasted at least a quarter of an hour tipping her miniature top hat this way and that, trying to decide on the most becoming angle.

"You might consider a bag over your head."

"You might consider manners."

"My father did well enough to escape the sewer, darling wife, while you still seem content to paddle in shit."

"Must you be so coarse?"

"Divorce me," he drawled. "I beg of you. Tell them I beat you, or I can't get it up, since the former is occasionally my desire and the latter is a side-effect of even looking at you. At least have an affair and leave me to mine."

"You'll never have an affair with Blair Waldorf," was her riposte, spiteful but shrewd. "One day, she may let you sigh over her to pay you back, but she'll never allow herself to be set up in a house in the country and bear your children. You remind me often enough how much higher above the salt she sits than me, and a girl like that would never stoop so low as to be your mistress."

"I'm amazed she stooped to being _your_ mistress."

"I'm the mistress of this house now," Jenny stated with satisfaction. "And we're presently due at a party, ring Arthur for a fresh suit."

"What party?"

"A tea party."

Chuck's face could barely counterfeit interest, but he accomplished a curl of the lip. "No one worth knowing has tea parties," he responded coldly and left the room to seek his valet, kicking the doorpost on the way out in frustration at the woman who adjusted her hat for the umpteenth time and allowed herself a small but triumphant wriggle.

_**~#~**_

"…and we hear that Miss Carr will soon be sporting dresses in the style known as Empire…"

"No!"

"How shocking!"

"You'd think Mr Boardman would keep a mistress more discreetly."

"Is there any way to keep mistress discreetly?" There was a ghost of Blair's smile on the rim of her teacup as she gave a catty little laugh. Gossip was what these people drew breath for, and it was gossip that would win her back her place among them once again. "I suppose he might've shut her up in the country, but what would be the fun in that for the…_gentleman_? Heaven knows he must need some respite from the constant bickering of his wife and daughter."

"Mrs B and Miss Emma?"

"How shocking!"

"You'd think they'd do it more discreetly."

And so the scandals ran on in concentric circles, within and inside one another unto the kernel of blackness at the centre that nobody wanted to acknowledge: that Miss Emma Boardman was spoilt and ungrateful because her mother never gave her any time, that Mrs Elizabeth Boardman snuck out at night like a young girl to intrigue with the lover she'd met while touring Switzerland ten years earlier. Nobody cared, though, and nor should they, for it was neither their problem nor truly their business. They only ever made it their business to snicker about in dark corners, but not so far that they began to wonder about the rights and wrongs of it all.

For then society would unravel, and who would be left to drink tea with?

Small puffs of downy white feathers flared around Blair's shoulders before running down her arm in a simple sleeve, pure white like the rest of the dress, pure white lace like the line around her throat. She wore around her wrist something she hadn't since lending it to Jenny: the white gold bracelet her father had gifted her for cotillion, a slender line of shine with an understated diamond at its centre. It glittered every time she raised her arm and, lowering her lashes, Blair fancied she did too. Her slight vanity was shared by a Mr James, seated beside her with his eyes on those darting lashes.

"I'd cherish a nagging wife," said he.

"Really?"

"Really."

"That, I find hard to believe." Blair's riposte had more than a touch of purr in it as she neatly laid down her knife and fork and began, "In my experience, gentlemen at first like to be nagged out of jealousy – I don't want you to see her, I want you all to myself – and then don't, and it's jealousy again that drives them into the arms of other women – why are you always late, how can I trust you anymore, etcetera. Nagging lovers are far more attractive than nagging wives."

"Have you a nagging lover, Miss Waldorf?"

"My conscience nags me not to take a lover," she replied piously. "More for the sake of that poor young man than myself, since I believe I should do no nagging and leave him to his own devices, and he would feel quite neglected and become dreadfully depressed."

"And passionately throw himself off the top of a cliff."

"If he could find one in New York."

The surrounding ladies and gentlemen tittered politely as a few footmen slid in to remove their plates and a few more slid out to attend to other parts of the house. Blair's attempt at flirtation hadn't been very funny but, as an invalid recently returned from seclusion, she was to be humoured in all things, and thereafter lauded for being her celebrated self once again. There never was such a good girl as Miss Blair Waldorf, who sat prettily in her snow maiden's gown and announced, "In any case, I doubt I'd fall for a man with little enough character to be driven to suicide over me."

The double doors opened behind her.

"So you're a rationalist?"

"Romance and all its environs – the letters, the pleas, the lovelorn sighs – are the most preposterous and impractical things I've ever heard of."

"I've known many a woman led to contemplation of soft rain and the street below by letters and pleas." The voice was dark, the sentiment behind it darker still. She tasted iron on her tongue, the iron Lily had prescribed to fortify her as she bit it, tongue coated red as her lips blanched of colour behind their demure pink paint. He was angry and she could sense it, raising the hair on her arms even before she turned her head and saw the flat line of his mouth, the noble jaw of that ignoble face set like stone. She would've given anything in the world to stop her heart and die then, which was hardly rational, but which would be an undoubtedly good excuse for breaking the rules of the game they were playing, the game where whoever stopped staring lost.

"Mr Bass and Mrs Bass." Serena was every inch the hostess in her contrasting black to Blair's white, standing with her spine laced into straightness and her fingers folded precisely. "Will you both take tea?"

Jenny's smile was tart. "Tea," she repeated, and took a seat at a table as far away from Blair as possible. Chuck followed after, and the gloss on his velvet collar made Blair ponder its texture, then shiver at the thought of the material rubbing the wrong way against her skin.

Eventually, every player will discover which game they're playing; so went the laws of Nature. Serena didn't regret stacking the deck, loading the dice, weighting the wheel, but she was victim to a pang every time Blair deliberately didn't look at her. To Serena, love was something that couldn't and shouldn't be ignored, and trying to avoid it would only do her friend more harm. She only had to watch Jenny watching Chuck watching Blair to understand the complexity and confusion that would only continue if she countenanced their behaviour. She wasn't sure whether she'd expected fight or flight or reunion, even with the presence of his wife, but Blair seemed fixated upon her conversation with Mr James and Chuck seemed fixated upon Blair. It could be a matter of provocation, but how to go about properly goading her friend…with the utmost delicacy, of course.

She did mean well.

That meant things ought to go well.

"You raise an interesting point, Mr Bass," Serena remarked as she sipped at a glass of mineral water. "Have the ladies of your acquaintance all been very romantic in comparison to Miss Waldorf?" She winced as a foot struck her ankle beneath the table and beneath her skirts, though Blair's expression didn't change.

Those enigmatic eyes rolled around to Serena's, moving with a reluctant languor. "I don't believe there is any woman in the world resistant to romance. You're bred on it as much as men are bred on buying and selling and the idea of acquisition."

"I don't believe there is any man in the world who doesn't enjoy the thought of acquisition," Blair interjected with a fierce upward thrust of her chin, much to the surprise of Mr James on her left and Mrs van Allen on her right. "You are all bred on the idea, yes, and so possession appeals in just the way that romance purportedly does to women. Where the sexes divide is upon the point of maintenance: we keep cats and dogs and canaries because we can care for them after the initial 'conquering', as I suppose you might call it. We don't keep them on our mantels or in glass boxes to show off to our friends, like the first dollar ever made by one's business. We love them quite naturally and instinctually; show me a man who could do the same."

"Show me a woman who remains constant in that care," Chuck rebutted, still languid in his movements but no longer in his gaze. "When one breed of dog is in fashion, you walk it in the park and meet other ladies with the same dog and exclaim over what a coincidence it is that you all have the same taste in dogs. The next week, your pet goes out of style so you buy another of a 'better' breed, or a new muff, or gloves with a particular kind of stitching. Men are as constant in the desires they had as younger men no matter their age, and don't bend in the wind like prettily dressed reeds. Your rationalist doctrine must accept that as being reasonable, as a natural function of the human heart, even if there are romantic connotations to it."

"I don't know about the human heart. I've scarcely encountered any truly 'human' organs."

"Then that may be indicative of some secret within your own."

Chatter broke out around the succession of small tables, first at the dangerous nature of the topic, then dissolving into a chorus of, "Have you a secret, Miss Waldorf? Who is it about? Is it about me? Is it about you? Does Mr Bass know it? Does Mrs Bass know it? Oh, do tell!"

Her hand closed in a hard fist over her stomach, as if she might vomit. She was exquisite like that, Serena reflected, dark and hunted like a beautiful doe. She was split between remorse and pleasure as Blair excused herself and Chuck shadowed her without so much as a bow to the assembled company. In deference to them and their privacy, the consummate hostess called for attention and for cards to be brought as a distraction. If anyone was not to be distracted, however, it was Jenny Bass. She observed both exits, examined her spotless gloves, and said absolutely nothing for a good few minutes until the tinge of pink had retreated from her cheeks.

"Blair."

"Go away."

"Blair."

"_Go_."

It was implausible that it had only been a few months since his saying her name had been enough to stop her in her tracks, to turn her around and make her fall towards him even when she was too proud to take a conscious step. Now she stalked into the cloakroom and pulled her mink down from a peg, clenching the fur too tightly for a second or two before dragging it over her back and around her shoulders.

"There is no obligation for you to be here, Mr Bass," she told him sharply. "No one requires your services."

"I'm obligated to defend romance over reason, it seems."

"And I'm obligated to champion reason as the last defence of the female."

"I'm not going to slap some sense into you, if that's what you're worried about."

Blair cast a glance back at him over her shoulder, her mouth pink and full like a wound and a trap. "I don't worry about you touching me. I don't have to worry about you touching me ever again, and I consider that a happy outcome." She pulled the coat closed over her dress, unconsciously stroking a sore spot on her belly as she did so.

He noticed.

"You're not –"

"No."

"I wish you were."

"I'm glad I'm not."

"Are you?" She could hear it now, feel it, the lines of pain running through his voice and through her like disquieting zaps of electricity. She might've known it was there all along. "Have you really found peace in what we've become, in my _marriage_, in this separation, in…look at me!" A jerk on her wrist brought her abruptly round, close enough that the supple blonde fur of her mink brushed against his shirtfront, that she had to tilt back her head to try and translate the mess in his face into words. Blair's lips parted and then closed again, neither asking to be kissed nor threatening to bite. This was still Chuck, for all he wasn't hers and she didn't allow herself to dream of acquisition. It would be easy, she knew, to fall down. To fall back in. Oh, how she longed to fall back in and live with him inside the mess, for all it was he who had thrown her down.

But she had wasted time enough playing the lily maid. Powerful women didn't permit their hearts to lead them back to the battlefield.

"I know you felt it. I know you feel it right now."

Never had she been so glad of the cold, of the lace crawling up over her clavicle and down past her wrists. Never had she found so much of interest in her pretty white gloves, in the darts delineating her slender fingers; they were her armour, her sword and shield since she had nothing she could actually swing at him.

"I don't want to see you anymore." She spoke to the hand now wrapped so very strangely, so very gently around hers. "I don't want to speak to you anymore." There was a flash of movement out of the corner of her right eye and Blair yanked her arm back, stating with a pride and certainty she couldn't quite manage to feel, "We're quite done."

"Quite done," Chuck repeated.

"Yes."

"You want nothing more to do with me."

"Yes."

"And what you want to say next is that I'm married and behaving improperly, and behaving cruelly to my wife and cruelly to you, the possession I was only interested in acquiring and to whom I could never be constant."

"You used me." Despite the silence in the cloakroom, Blair's voice was barely a murmur. "You and only you know how to torture me as I once did you, and you decided to take revenge on me for that. Simply making me unmarriageable wasn't enough, but my falling in love with you only to be abandoned was just deserts." He no longer held her hand but they were still too close for comfort, and she drew her the hem of martyr's dress back from him so the rest of her could follow. "Maybe it was. Maybe I deserved it. But I don't deserve this, Chuck."

"This?"

"How can you pretend ignorance?" Her countenance was brilliant, containing within it some kind of pure vindication which brought the taste of bile to Chuck's throat. "The letters, the visits, the way you still pull on me like a kite string! As you said, you're married. As I said, we're quite done." She swallowed. "I don't love you anymore. If you plan to keep playing the game to guarantee my downfall, I assure you: it takes more than even you to destroy Blair Waldorf."

"My resolve to destroy you was never very strong," he responded. "At the outset, it's true, I wanted to see you broken and begging, because…because there never was a man in California, Blair, but a shadow. There never is a man when he has no match in you, never a sentient being that can feel and understand, that can sleep or eat or _function_, and yet you think that every moment was nothing more than a ruse. Do you not think I feel it crawling under my skin? The honest to God truth that I damaged you, and it will never be my business to fix you ever again? But if there were the slightest chance that you were lying…" Chuck silently took her hand again and held it still, her pulse fluttering like a frightened bird within the cage of his fingers. "Is it possible you still love me?"

This time, she didn't draw back. She was no longer trembling.

Her eyes were black in the gloom.

"How could I still love you after what you did?"

He let her go. He let her go, but the question came again when she had gone, again at night on the uncomfortable couch, again and again every time he woke up between bouts of clear liquid and white powder to vomit or turf Jenny out of his study once again. One thought clung throughout these weak periods of consciousness, surfacing at the end of a lighter spell to resound and become coherent: constancy. Care after acquisition. Natural love.

He was going to have to get a dog.

* * *

><p><strong><em>So, my first attempt at a schedule went a bit wrong...sorry for this being a little later than expected. Thanks to:<em>** flipped, busybee90us2003, fiona249, Eternally Romantic, MegamiTenchi, Laura, BellaB2010, SaturnineSunshine, tinamarie333, Nicole Lovely, blair4eva, L, ggloverxx19, abelard, lulubelle2010, Stella296, aliceeeebeth, B, dreamgurl, teddy bear, acciojackoconnell, nostalgiakills,** notoutforawalk,** **Avschick33, Nikki999, Lizzie0920rb _and_ Maribells.**


	5. Diamonds & Dogs

**4. Diamonds & Dogs  
><strong>

The consideration of constancy and consistent love was, ironically, constantly on Chuck's mind, even after he'd thrown off the comforting numbness of alcohol and substance abuse and begun to stare blearily out at the world again. The commonly recurring thought was that he should get a dog to prove his constancy – cats made him sneeze, and furthermore Jenny would probably decide such a sleek creature looked charming draped over the furniture – was an immature one, to be sure, but even Chuck himself wasn't cognisant of what a right state of mind was or whether he still had one. He guessed that a right state of mind would involve telling Blair all about Jenny and what a fool he'd been to fall for it, but the consequences of truth telling, usually steep, verged on mountainous in their case. The bitch would find out, and she would hurt them both instead of hurting him alone, and that was something even Chuck in his wrong state of mind couldn't countenance. Instead, he would go the immature route: he would get a dog, for comedic value when it pissed on the table legs if for nothing else.

"Arthur," he called after his morning scotch, which was more for the tremor in his hands than out of any desire for intoxication. "Where would one get a dog?"

"What variety of dog, sir?"

Nothing fashionable, nothing fancy. Nothing large. Nothing that was liable to savage Jenny, for then it would have to be destroyed for doing him a good turn. Something like himself, perhaps. The kind of dog that suited his current reflections upon reality.

"Say I wanted a bastard."

"A bastard, sir?"

"Say I wanted a dog that had the capacity for change. The capacity to go from being a mongrel to the most desired type of dog in the city."

It was not in Arthur's mandate to judge or begrudge his employer anything, having been there for most of Chuck's development and understanding the gentleman he still thought of as a boy better than most. Recently, however, even he found Chuck Bass hard to comprehend. His emotions swung back and forth like a pendulum, the slightest things throwing him down into self-loathing and despondency or prompting manic episodes where he wrote dozen page missives or appropriated and then discarded five or ten or fifteen expensive suits, always searching for something better. The search for something better was Chuck's _raison d'être _these days; even the endless parade of bronzed California girls standing in for his problems not so long ago hadn't been this difficult to get rid of.

"The pound, sir."

"Then go to the pound." Chuck lit a cigarette with a flourish of his fingers, though the glow from its smouldering tip did little to bring colour to his face. "Bring me back something alive, and healthy if you can get it."

"Sir." The valet bowed, then went in search of his third best hat and gloves. His mission seemed liable to be messy.

The study was no more empty upon Arthur's exit that it had been upon his entry. It was a void either way, since Blair was right: her experience of the human heart was limited, possibly because seeking out a heart had brought her into contact with the stunted type of thing which could fall into such a state of disrepair and despair. Chuck was amazed she could still believe him indifferent to her, that he was only maintaining their relationship for the sake of torment – how could she, when he had rejoiced in a heartbeat where one had long been absent inside that cloakroom, surely loud enough for her to hear it too. Now it was missing again, and the room was empty. He supposed he'd given her no reason to listen for it and no opportunity either, now that these were no longer the days of balls that meant nothing and dances that meant everything with her cheek pressed to his chest.

With a small hiss, the cigarette extinguished. It took a moment for Chuck to realise that it had burnt out against the tip of his index finger.

He'd felt absolutely nothing.

_**~#~**_

"To what do I owe the honour of this visit, Miss van der Woodsen?"

"B. Stop it."

Her friend was colourless, distractingly so. Blair's dress was pale grey, not a smooth dove colour but more the hue of ash, with the shadows beneath her eyes a remarkably similar shade. She lacked warm blood to flush her skin and add lustre to her eyes, which were somehow forbidding and grey too, shadows reflected in deep brown irises.

"How could you?" The gown's sleeves draped over Blair's hands, so she looked not to be twisting her cuffs but some strange shroud. "If I really had just lost a baby, would you still have tried to corner me? We're not chess pieces, Serena, or if we are you invited the rival king and queen to tea in the hope that somehow we would find ourselves on the same side! What did you think, that my heart would swell and he would ask and she would smile and release him? How ignorant are you, and how vainglorious about your reputation as a matchmaker that you'd try to force me to break a commandment and fuck about with Chuck to suit you?"

"He doesn't want to fuck about with you," Serena responded calmly. "And it wasn't ignorance that made me do this."

"What, then? Ignorance is almost admissible, but arrogance?"

"Can't you see what you're doing? You're treating me exactly the same way you treat Chuck, though you'll never be happy without him or, I hope, without me! You consider yourself betrayed and wall yourself up in a tower where nobody can touch you, where nothing exists but the childish prospect of a prince who might one day come and rescue you from us!"

"How could you be so cruel?" Something glittered on Blair's cheek, and she angrily swiped it away. "Even seeing him, even speaking to him hollows me out and makes me hate myself! Why wasn't I enough, I waste time asking myself, why is she so much more and so better suited to him? He loved me first, the very first, and she's a _maid_, for the love of God! Chuck still plays at loving me to suit his own purposes, do you know what that feels likes? When your own love is like a pure flame that can stay alight even when you douse it every other moment, and what you get in return is barely even a farce? He wouldn't have married her if he loved me for real!"

"He loves you for real. He always has."

"How? How could you possibly know that?"

Serena's gaze tended to be penetrating, but now it was as gentle and true as blue-blooded velvet. "Before everything, you were too busy hating him to notice the way he looked at you. I'm not sure he himself knew how he was looking at you, but to me he seemed like a Renaissance painting: the way the light is all butter-coloured except on him directly, as if God forgot to direct it that way; the way his eyes are dark and dangerous and yet somehow the softest thing you could imagine – but only on you, where the light that forgot him shines brightest. There's no way he married Jenny for love, and she has neither money nor connections to entice him. The only thing they have in common is you, in fact, so it follows that he married her because of you."

"But why?"

"To hide something from you? To protect you from something? Because he considered himself beneath you, or to neutralise Jenny in some way? I don't know which, B, but something happened. If it hadn't, I'd stake my life that we'd be planning your June wedding right now, not mourning her inelegant December ceremony."

Blair was silent, turned towards the window but not ostensibly watching the street. In what might have been the smallest voice Serena had ever heard, she said, "He thought that I…I'm so used to clutching at my stomach as if something was there, and he thought…and he told me he wished there were something there." Her tone strengthened. "What kind of man vacillates between wanting the best for me in his letters and wishing me damned to Hell in reality?"

"Perhaps he doesn't consider a baby a damning prospect."

"He can't – or won't – even take care of himself, Serena. How in the world could we weave our lives around a child?"

"Avoid the Wicked Queen," Serena supplied dryly. "She has to be the cause of all this."

If the sharp-tongued Miss van der Woodsen had known the truth of her words, she might've chosen to leave out the reference to royalty. Her own head was golden, but another was very nearly fair enough to be shine white, and perched upon it was a tiara constructed of even paler stones. Jenny was shopping and punishing her husband simultaneously, and nothing was more satisfying or more chastening than the price which accompanied unalloyed white gold.

"Miss Waldorf." She mentioned the name casually, though her purpose was anything but. "She has a white gold bracelet from this establishment, I do believe?"

"A commission by her late father, Mrs Bass." Mr Goldman was proud of his incongruously apt family name, and also of his flawless memory. The shop proprietor claimed to remember every purchase made from Goldman & Goldman since its opening, and he was always eager to please those who lined and his pockets and made more products and more purchases possible. He continued, "I believe it was to commemorate the occasion of Miss Waldorf's debut. Mr Waldorf was quite firm about its quality."

"Was the gold as good as this?"

"The very best available."

"And the central gem, the diamond?"

"Madam has seen the piece?" Mr Goldman's whiskery ginger eyebrows rose, but not high enough to be impolite. He reassumed the dignified mask of service in less than a heartbeat. "It was one of the very best stones I've ever dealt with for its size, cut from a diamond which was apparently as big as a boulder. Rainbow clarity, the whole thing, a genuine dazzler." His brows shifted again, and Jenny was reminded of orange caterpillars. "Interestingly enough, Mrs Bass, you yourself may have a connection to that larger diamond."

"Why?" She locked onto him with her Fabergé blue gaze. "What does it have to do with me?"

"It was roughly three years ago that your husband was interested in that very same gem. He wanted to know what had become of the rest of it, which was that it had been cut into solitaires and sold on. He wanted to know who had the solitaires at that time, and where he could purchase one."

"For what purpose?"

"He didn't say, but it was quite the talk of the town amongst those in our profession."

"_What_ was?" Jenny was very nearly hissing.

"The purchase of a one thousand dollar engagement ring, a faultless solitaire. It has never been resold, as far as I'm aware, I assumed it must belong to you…" The jeweller trailed off, then added tactfully, "But coloured stones like your own are far more in vogue this year. What is known as the 'emerald cut' is in itself unparalleled."

He was right, of course, since she had impeccable taste and the stone she'd chosen was, of course, without faults and without compare. Yet Jenny left the jewellers without buying anything, marching halfway down the sidewalk before she remembered there was a carriage waiting. She never allowed herself to slouch back against the leather seat until the door had been closed and they'd taken off at a brisk lick – no one was allowed to observe the precise lines of her face crumbling into a pout and pensive petulance. It was just like him to believe the provenance of a diamond mattered to a girl who had dozens, who'd probably received dozens over the course of her career as a debutante. It was just like him too to never sell the wretched thing, to keep it like the corpse of their deceased romance. An image resolved in her mind: a small black box thumping the time in the pocket over his heart, and Jenny rolled up her tongue as if to spit it out. She wasn't certain either of them needed a heart at all, come to think of it. Love between a husband and wife was proper and logical, and that was that.

Diamond or no diamond.

Blair – her milk white, bland face – was Jenny's firm fixation as she directed a boy up the stairs to her room with her earlier purchases. She was learning how not to pay bills so as to make herself appear richer, and therefore fobbed him off politely before stalking into her now crowded dressing room, the couch covered in hat boxes rather than Chuck. She returned to Blair at that disappointment, to contemplation of how she could be considered beautiful. Once upon a time, Jenny would've agreed, would've protested that she was beautiful and wonderful and _clean_, something the rich always were when the poor could bathe only rarely; now, floating in a similar champagne dream with silk on her own back, she re-evaluated. She had fine hair, that was true, almost a pelt of dark glossiness. But did it curl so on its own? Did it form precise pompadours and reflect back the candlelight without hours of preparation? No. Her skin was too pale against the vivid colouring of her hair and eyes, one lip had a little too much bow and didn't quite fit against the other. Her nose was slightly snub. How in the world could such things be thought of as classical beauty?

Upon removal of her gown, Jenny examined the spars of her ribs smugly. The age of child-bearing hips being admirable was over, and she adored the idea of no spine sharper than hers. Her backbone was clearer than all others because it was stronger than theirs, because she was stronger than them. She would be their queen soon enough, whether she decided to return for that tiara or not.

She was dressed only in a shirtwaist and stockings when she heard the noise. It was muffled, as if it came from some far off part of the house, and it was in no way what one expected to hear in the house of gentleman:

A bark.

Descending the stairs still _dishabille_, Jenny sourced the sound to one of the house's many kitchens. She only knew this one because the walls were tiled in navy blue, and every surface that could, matched. Her stockinged feet deadened her progress down a rarely used hallway and short flight of steps, so new that they wouldn't dare creak under her slight weight. As she remembered, everything was glossy and blue, even the crockery, even, in fact, a large plate willow patterned plate that sat in front of the back door. There was a large steak pooling blood atop it, and dividing its attention between the door and the steak was some kind of carpet. It was brown, it was shaggy, and it had no place whatsoever in Jenny's pristine kitchen.

"What," Jenny inquired of her husband, who was lying on the floor beside the rug-like creature and ruining his shirt, most likely. The creature broke off its staring match with both steak and door every few moments or so to gaze adoringly at Chuck, who didn't even glance in her direction. "Is that?"

"Jezebel," he replied, in mocking reference to the Biblical whore. "Meet Monkey. Monkey, my wife."

She eyed them both coldly. "That filthy thing will destroy the pedigree of every vanity pet within a hundred miles."

"Or he would, had I not had him seen to before he graced our humble home." Chuck rolled over onto his back with his eyes slanting lazily, but in no way pleasantly towards Jenny; they were as frigid as hers. "A dog and his master should be one and the same in all things, and in both cases the flesh is unwilling – and you should stop wandering around in your underwear, the view is about as enchanting as an underdressed corpse. Have the dog's steak and get some flesh on your bones before they break."

"You care? How sweet."

"I don't want to be accused of the immensely gratifying crime of your murder."

"Chuck."

They studied one another, as distantly as competitors on opposite sides of the battlefield. But both were used to war, and war usually ran hotter than this: the slow build to the charge, the charge to victory, to the victor the spoils. Spoiled was Jenny when she couldn't get what she wanted, and so she inched the pale blue cotton of her shirtwaist up over her jutting hips, the quasi-concave slope of her stomach. She stroked the skin there without looking anywhere but at him, the proud shapes of his mouth and nose and jawline. Her lashes flicked down, and then up again. He didn't turn away.

"Jenny."

"You got the dog for her, didn't you?" Her accusation was soft, measured. "To prove your constancy. To prove her wrong."

"Yes."

"And what can I do?"

He sighed, and she felt it ripple through her when he approached. She batted her eyelashes once again and then raised them, trying to act as a heroine would act, as a beguiled maiden would act, as the spoils of a long running battle would behave when she was won.

"I'm going away," he told her matter-of-factly. "I'm taking a trip."

"Where?"

"Anywhere that doesn't involve you acting like a common prostitute, since you seem to think that's what entertains me. Florida, maybe. Palm Beach."

"I've never been to Florida."

"Then get one of your swains to take you."

"I'm coming with you," she announced, quite as matter-of-factly as he'd spoken. "To care for your needs, as a good wife should."

"My needs." Chuck laughed darkly and without mirth. "My need to be rid of you? My need to be alone, if loneliness cannot be assuaged by the only person who could cure it but who is unwilling to do so? My need to get to know this dog, of all things, to prove that I can be constant and stop lying to – to myself? My need to eat and sleep without harassment, to sleep on a bed, to hear voices that aren't yours? How in the world do you plan to care for those needs?"

"You mustn't be so selfish. Besides, I'm not suggesting we go alone." Jenny wound a strand of bleached hair around and around her finger. "You lack male company, that much is clear, and I have someone I'd like you to meet."

**_~#~_**

_Dan,_

_I know you're having such fun in Europe, but can you spare a week or two for your baby sister? Spousal affection takes me to California, where I would seem quite improper without a companion. My choice is two ladies, one of whom is in more than a little need of diversion. You know how good we always were at board games, so I entreat you to find the words Miss Blair Waldorf most likes and repeat them until she is no longer bored and no longer an obstacle to me. And why, you ask, would I want an obstacle as a companion?_

_If you wish to know, I shall expect your arrival within the week._

_From the desk of an expectant  
>Mrs Charles Bartholomew Bass<em>

Hats like preening swans and mouths set like traps, that was how they looked: fine, polished, an undeniable product of the _beau monde_. Jenny only glided out into the entryway when they crossed the threshold and, much to her surprise, the creature Chuck had christened Monkey came skittering across the floor and immediately stuck its nose into the curve of Blair's palm. She started and then stayed utterly still, letting it explore her leather glove before plopping down on its haunches and giving her a baleful stare.

"Is he yours?"

"My husband's," Jenny told her with great self-satisfaction. "Miss Waldorf, Miss van der Woodsen, this is Monkey Bass."

"Bass?" Blair repeated. "Why, did you birth him?"

All three laughed in the too high sickly way one laughs when one is being false, then processed into the red room. Serena hated it on sight and voiced her discomfort; Blair merely stiffened. The room around her seemed painted in blood when her own blood was still so thin and precious. Lily's iron tonic was helping, but her phantom symptoms would not abate: phantom pregnancy, phantom loss. Every ornament appeared as if it might ooze, though the whiff of sandalwood was as settling to the stomach as stewed ginger might have been. That was Lily's suggestion to ward off further sickness, her favourite spice during two trying gestations. 'Serena was the hardest,' she'd declared without preamble. "I can only assume it was all the long limbs. Would she ever stay still? No. Would she ever let me sleep? No. I had morning sickness, motion sickness, vertigo, oh my…'

The sound of her own name made Blair jump.

"Your thoughts have stolen you from us, Miss Waldorf." Jenny had made Blair's tea exactly how she loathed it, filled to the brim with milk, and her teeth gleamed as she passed it over. "Though for a woman years past her coming out, your thoughts must be your greatest comfort."

Serena clenched her jaw on Blair's behalf. "Blair is not even close to twenty," she retorted. "And nor am I. And yet here we sit, happy as innocent babes in your company."

No babe was born innocent in New York City. This, even the impoverished Jenny Humphrey had known.

Sitting so close together, their three skirts spilled onto each other, first ash and deadness, then the yellow of young roses, then deep green depravity. A very deliberate hand was placed upon a knee, the oblong emerald that was too large to be tasteful flashing green fire.

"Might I know," Blair inquired, unable to take her eyes from the hateful thing though its presence made her own fingers suddenly icy and bloodless. "Why it is you summoned us here? It's not every day we get requests for our visiting hours, the practice is for the asker with the question to come to the askee for her answer. Those are the rules upon which society was founded, though someone like yourself –" The lie of an orphaned heiress stuck in her throat. "Has a good enough reason not to be aware of them."

"I wonder you mention my history, when your own is such a pretty pack of lies."

"Your own lies are not so pretty."

"Tell me –" Jenny's eyes narrowed to slits. "Is that couch quite big enough for you, or should I find you another where you can properly spread your legs?"

"Tell _me_," Blair snapped, her colour rising. "Is that ring quite big enough for you, or should I find you out another so you can convince yourself your husband loves you?"

"I was this very moment thinking of Chuck, isn't that strange?" Jenny was all at once the gracious hostess, pushing forward a glass plate with an array of petit fours for her guests to pick at and pretend to eat. "You know about our deal, naturally, the deal that saves your neck from scandal. So you know that when I make this request of you and Serena, you're not going to turn it down."

"What deal?" Serena interjected.

"She knows."

"I don't."

"But Blair does."

But Blair held her expression stoic without so much as a twitch, and Jenny's eyebrows ascended.

"No…could it be you still don't know? As I recall, I did ask Chuck very nicely not to tell…it's so sweet of him to heel and acquiesce. I was sure he'd whisper it in your ear at the first opportunity, and the two of you would keep it a secret from me. But you really don't know, which is more or less the most darling thing in the world." She leant forward with an unladylike show of relish. "You see, Blair, I knew the second the two of you had been together because of that silly grin on his face, and I gave him two options: choose you, and I would let the world know you were a whore before you two could even get the banns read, or choose me, and let you go on playing the virgin queen to your heart's content. Oh dear, I was certain you must know. All these months of agony when you thought he'd used you…but the truth is, he doesn't even trust you enough to confide in you." Jenny sighed, a deep and theatrical sigh. "And I don't trust you enough with my husband to let you free quite yet, so here's my request."

There was no light in the scarlet room, or if there was, Blair couldn't find it. All she saw and sensed was red, on the periphery of her vision, splattered like paint across her eyeballs. Love was one thing, but being a piece in a game played against her will was quite another.

"Spit it out."

"Come to Palm Beach with Chuck and I. Prove the animosity between us that our peers seem to believe exists doesn't, and I'll leave you alone. I won't use what I have against you unless you try to take him from me, and I'll make him take me back with him to California. No more heartache for you, and no more for me. Everybody wins."

"And Serena?"

Serena's hand was dangerously close to the cake knife.

"Serena goes for you, for another reason to come with us and make peace. But I warn you –" Jenny too looked to be checking a gesture towards the knife. "If you so much as breathe in his direction and your breath has no scorn with it, the game is back on." Her tone was blue fire, hot and chilling. "And you will end it lower than I ever was."

Which was how Blair ended up gripping the cake knife, controlling any hint of savagery by coolly slicing something fragrant into tiny, inedible pieces. "Yes," she said quietly. "Serena and I would be delighted to go to Florida with you, Mrs Bass, how kind of you to ask us. But you," she continued, with far too much tranquility. "Will let him know that I know, and that I wish to have nothing more to do with him. We're holidaying together, after all. That should put paid to any rumours of…animosity. I want that to be the end of it."

"Tremendous." Jenny bit into an éclair and smiled as it spurted cream all over her waiting tongue. No one knew about Dan yet, and she was content to keep it that way up until they left Manhattan. She'd quit toying with Blair when Dan was through wooing and then discarding her, when Chuck had seen the love of his life swooning over another man. When that happy day came, then she'd quit.

Then Chuck would love her for being just as devious as he was.

* * *

><p><strong><em>I apologise for the lateness of this chapter - my excuse is that I'm from down south and up here, up north, the weather is doing for my delicate sensibilities. So far I've had a cough, cold, the flu, conjunctivitis...also, the fact that, to me, all Louis' lines sound like, 'I hayt Chook und Bleh ees mah beebee mamah, but I doo hav le smull peenus...' has not been very inspiring. Anyway, nice to be back in a world where people can enunciate.<br>Thanks to:_ fiona249, ggloverxx19, thegoodgossipgirl, E, tinamarie333, flipped, L, ICan'tBloodyLoginOnMyIPod, Chairluv, notoutforawalk, abelard, Lalai, Laura, Eternally Romantic, dreamgurl, blair4eva, Stella296, BellaB2010, bfan, teddy bear, MegamiTenchi, , SaturnineSunshine, lulubelle2010 _(I'm sorry this is so late, I hope you're feeling better!)_, lil7miss7sarcastic, thepluot, Nikki999, themusejane. **


	6. My Lady's Chamber

**5. My Lady's Chamber**

"…and I told her to tell him I wanted nothing more to do with him. Soliciting for a mistress is insult enough, but not disclosing the reason he married her? Wedding and bedding her without even so much as a glance in my direction? Now he's tired of her, and I'm forbidden fruit again. It's just the same as every other time."

"But you are going to Florida?"

"Yes."

"It's all settled?"

"Yes. Why are you so interested?"

Blair was wearing a loop of citrines around her neck, smoky stones the approximate size of cherries. She fiddled with one as Asher fidgeted with his cravat, twirling the diamond pin back and forth, back and forth between his fingers. He'd barely touched his brioche – but then, nor had Blair – and his smooth cheeks were slightly flushed as he murmured, "How are you set for money, dear girl?"

She flinched as if he'd bitten her. "Fine. Absolutely fine."

"Don't take offence, but here's how I see it: you live a gorgeous lifestyle which suits you very well, but you still tread carefully. Jenny Bass doesn't know how to tread carefully, having never been rich before. Her champagne glasses have diamonds in the stems, even her handtowels come from Paris and she doesn't like to wear the same article of jewellery twice. This is admittedly gauche, but you'll be expected to keep up with it in Palm Beach, around those with more green than sense who will emulate her to try and impress."

"So what do you suggest?

"Work for me," the Gamesome Gallant offered, taking a gulp of what, judging by the fumes rising from its surface, probably wasn't coffee. "Or, more accurately, for my paper. Spy on her, on your party. Spin it however you like. I'll print exactly what you send me, with every column praising the beauty and modesty of Miss Blair Waldorf while Mrs Charles Bass cavorts about with no idea of how to behave in a vacation setting. I'll bet you anything she knows how to survive in the city because of you; this is a new ballgame, Blair. New people, new experiences, new rules. Help me make her a laughing stock. If you so choose…" He paused delicately. "Help me make them both laughing stocks."

"You're drinking more," Blair remarked quietly, skating over both request and taboo reference.

"I'm lonesome," Asher replied, a quick twist to one side of his mouth and one brow. "And sometimes I imagine that I care for your boy too, and then I envy you."

"You…and Chuck…"

"Don't worry, lovely B, he doesn't have that look about him when he catches sight of me. You, on the other hand: man on fire, as he ever was. He keeps saying prayers and you keep piling on the tinder. And don't pretend you're not hoping your feelings will turn to ash along with him." His expression waxed shrewd. "You wouldn't have been so direct with Jenny otherwise. You think, in your heart of hearts, that he'll fight harder if you don't want him to, and that he'll slip up soon, and that you'll hate him for slipping up, and then you can hate him properly."

"I'm not half so convoluted."

"You haven't answered my question."

Blair bit her lower lip. "Everything I write about her will seem like sour grapes. People will begin to wonder about our relationship."

"Then you'll be anonymous, my very select and candid source at the resort, the Gamesome Gallant's glamorous assistant. They'll go wild for you as a personality, if not a person, and they'll accept what they read because they'll fall in love with the idea of you – the missing piece of the Gallant, a nameless lady from far off climes…we could be quite dynamic together. I've always thought so."

"I'd need a name."

"Something eye-catching."

"Something tasteful."

"No, something which veritably oozes scandal. You don't like the Tattletale Tart, by any chance?"

"No."

"Blabbermouth Beauty?"

"No."

"The Debutante Discusses?"

"That sounds like a parlour game."

Asher huffed a comma of dark hair off his forehead and took his friend's gloved hand. She wore leather in concession to the low temperature, so her fingers were slippery and pale lichen green. "You are the only woman in the world I consider my match," he stated. "And I swear I would've married you if there had been a child. In a heartbeat, Blair. Without a second thought. No matter who made snide comments about birth dates and the like. So now, you're going to do this for me."

Blair smiled weakly, both warmed by his words and mildly piqued by their conclusion. "So I will work for you, and I will accept a stupid title."

"Naturally you will." He did what he always did when sweetness mixed with spite, and planted a kiss on her palm. "Gossip Girl."

"I hate it."

"I bought you that admirable sealskin. You owe me."

A gust of wind was sucked in through the door of Delacroix's as it opened, though neither Blair nor Asher looked up from their tête-à-tête. They had decidedly the two most arrogant heads in the establishment, and even the waiters didn't dare draw too close; the young man who accompanied the chime of the bell above the door must have been stone blind or extraordinarily brash not to notice. He approached the table without so much as a tip of his hat, only to bow low and sweep it from his head upon reaching Blair's side. His hair was black and short, and his eyes were brown and friendly. He had the air about him of an obliging Labrador, nothing hard or aloof or city-bred at all. Blair drew back her hand, but said nothing. A pucker appeared between her eyebrows.

"Yes?" Asher asked sharply. "What do you want?"

"Miss Waldorf," said the newcomer, rolling the name over his tongue and disregarding Asher entirely. "You and I are soon to go to Florida together."

"Are we?" Blair casually added a spoonful of whatever Asher was drinking to her coffee and continued, "Only, I'm not in the habit of taking vacations with gentlemen I've never met before and who intrude on my private business."

"Private business shouldn't be conducted in so public a place."

"But that is _my_ business, no?"

"I hope so." He was rolling his hat from hand to hand, twirling the brim and smiling a strange half-smile as if he had much to be pleased about. "Miss Waldorf, my name is Daniel Humphrey. My sister was good enough to invite me to Palm Beach along with you, both to bear her husband company and as diversion and protection for you ladies."

"Shall I need protection from your manners?" One such lady inquired acerbically. "Maybe you can tell Mrs Bass that it's customary to inform all members of the party of any other guests joining them so they can form a prior acquaintance or refuse the invitation."

"You could consider this our prior acquaintance."

"I don't consider myself as having any acquaintance with you at all, Mr Humphrey. My experience thus far is that you like to interrupt private business, insult a lady's confidante before her face and announce you'll be diverting her from some unseen boredom and protecting her from some unseen foe! Who –"

"Daniel Humphrey." A line of blue smoke exited the mouth of the aforementioned insulted confidante like a wisp of raincloud. "The writer."

"Yes."

"Where are you from, Mr Humphrey?"

"Brooklyn."

"And yet you write as if you know us. B –" He turned to confront Blair's incredulity. "Who do we know who is like Mr Humphrey's Carolina, a maid who rises above her station by lying and artifice and who doesn't know how to behave in well-bred society?" Asher performed a vicious wink. "And then, who do we know who best resembles the darling innocence of Diana, a young lady doesn't enjoy society's morals and who smokes only because it makes her feel daring? Not to forget Henry, of course, the former playboy trapped in a marriage with a woman whom he abhors and who is secretly pining for dear Di? Oh, and by the way –" He flashed white teeth at Daniel Humphrey in an arctic smile. "My name is Asher Hornsby, but I'm better known as the Gamesome Gallant. If anyone were to know what truth exists in your menagerie of novels, it would be me."

"Aren't your columns unsubstantiated?"

"True as can be, and your sister never fails to make good copy."

This last, delivered with an unmistakeable sneer, incited Blair to rise from her chair and step smartly between the two men. She'd earlier sensed and made reference to Asher's drinking, but to go so far as to insult Jenny's brother before his face – even if it was only for her own sake – was too far. Her friend was in a dark place, whether it was from love or lack of love or despair on her part, and he didn't need a bloody nose added into the bargain. Daniel Humphrey had understood the inference alright, had blazed red to the roots of his hair and started forward.

"Mr Humphrey." Her voice was smoother and richer than oil on troubled waters, bordering on heavy cream. "You must be staying in your sister's house on Fifth Avenue, is that right? It's very near to my own. If you escorted me home, I suppose we could start building the acquaintance that politeness requires." She tucked her hands into her black pocked sealskin muff and kissed Asher coolly on each cheek by way of a reprimand. "Goodbye, Mr Hornsby."

They left the restaurant in silence, Blair hanging back as her escort stormed ahead and out into the street, seeming to mash the sidewalk with every step. She fell in beside him after a moment, tilted her hat slightly to the left and advised, "You mustn't mind Mr Hornsby, Mr Humphrey. He makes his living from getting a rise out of people, that's how he gets the best stories. Plague someone with a lie, stalk them around the city with it and in the end they'll be begging to confess the truth. Why, he even proposed the idea of an engagement between myself and your sister's husband last year, in the hope of getting the name of my beau at the time. He's one of the best, but he's brutal."

The lies slipped like quicksilver from her lips.

"Dan."

"What?"

"I like to be called Dan. May I call you Blair?"

"Certainly not."

A cab seemed a wonderful prospect, but there was none in sight. Blair curled her fingers into fists inside her muff.

"Was it true?"

"What?"

"About you and my brother-in-law." Dan withdrew and lit a cigarette without even the thought of offering one to his companion, who would've declined anyway. She preferred to smoke her own scented Turkish tobacco, and that less and less nowadays. She'd lost her taste for it. "Was any of it true, is that why Jenny wants you close by her side?"

"We knew each other as children, if that counts against us."

"Do you like him now? Is he a good husband to my sister, do you know?"

"I should think he'd be a good husband to anyone," was Blair's answer. "He wouldn't get under a woman's feet when she was trying to run a household, except in the critical matter of blended and unblended scotch. He knows how to dance and, on occasion, how to be civil. The two of them could stay out of each other's way with relative ease and live a life of nothing but comfort."

"What of passion?"

"What of it, writer Dan? What need have we of passion?" The crease was back between her brows. "You marry where you're instructed to marry, or for wealth, or for position. Only the poor marry for love."

"We were poor," he pointed out.

"And now your sister isn't, and never shall be again – so up comes her star, and up comes yours with it. The Humphrey family is in the ascendancy."

"You're being very graceful about it."

"About what?"

Blair halted as they reached the steps to her front door, sparkling a little from frost which had yet to burn off. Dan was forced to stop and turn to face her, and there was not as much difference between their heights as one might've thought. She still raised her chin as if in response to an attacker, squaring up to Jenny Humphrey's brother and not knowing if she disliked him for that blessed state or merely because he was contemptible. He was an outsider, his artlessness plain for all to see. He knew nothing of her world, and yet he still toyed with it in these books of his, believed that people such as his sister and Chuck Bass were capable of passion. Blair no longer countenanced the idea of passion as something she could have for herself, and as such didn't conceive of it as viable for others. She used to be their benchmark in all things, so why should they dare to lust and reciprocate desire without her example or say so?

"About my sister having been your maid," Dan finally answered, the stop having pulled him up short. "You speak as if it means nothing, but I guess even having to think of her as your equal after she curled your hair and laid out your clothes must have been difficult."

"I was pleased at her reason for going."

"Yes?"

"Yes." Blair tucked her muff beneath one arm. "I'm glad she found someone so similar to herself." With a small and private smile, she mounted the first step with a precise press of her heel to the ice and turned her back. "Good morning to you, Mr Daniel Humphrey. I'll see you on the train."

Dan walked on along the avenue, pausing now and again to assess the houses on either side. The further he travelled, the newer they became, less and less like the Holland house he'd envisioned as he wrote. His sister's house was what might be considered a while away from Miss Waldorf's, at the end of the street where the more nouveau of the riche resided. He was very nearly at a loss as to how his first meeting with the girl whom he was meant to seduce had actually gone, confused by the strange inferences that undercut her speech and her intimacy with Asher Hornsby, the man in the restaurant. The idea of her having history with his brother-in-law was alarming, since Dan's first impressions of Chuck had been of a man who couldn't settle to one thing, and that thing was Jenny. He had that air about him of languorous wealth that Dan could never achieve, the same quality that put a gloss on Blair Waldorf with her sceptical gaze and her cold flushed lips and the dainty layers of lace and felt she wore instead of a hat. Those two, and all others like them – they liked to waste. Perhaps wasting her hopes on him was adequate payback for all those years in service.

The Basses were seated comfortably in the smallest parlour, though their respective faces reflected lemon rind bitterness and thunder.

"How do you like the city?" Jenny queried, her mouth scrunched into a sour pout of disappointment that Dan remembered well from childhood. "And Fifth Avenue, how do we measure up to the home of your fictional Miss Hayes?"

"Excellent, on both counts."

"And what of our most precious cargo?"

"I met her as directed, at Delacroix's," Dan told his sister casually, flipping his coat out from beneath him as he sat. "She was just as you described, but not quite as I expected. I escorted her home when the gentleman who was with her became…inflamed, yet she left by my side a lingering sense of condemnation. Such a stern visage she had, as if she didn't like me and would never like me simply because I'd spoken to her."

"She will never like you." Chuck lit a cigarette for something to do, a place to focus his gaze as both Humphreys turned to stare at him. "She doesn't like anyone."

"No, darling," said Jenny sweetly. "She doesn't like _you_."

Chuck definitely didn't like this brother of hers, a second Humpty Dumpty to join his festival of fools. He'd assumed male company meant some crony of hers, and that she would take another woman along to amuse herself or ridicule the other. What he hadn't expected, however, was to be informed that Mr Daniel Humphrey was arriving a few days before they were due to take the train, and that Misses Serena van der Woodsen and Blair Waldorf would be going with them. News of Blair would have been welcome had it not been for the trump card up Jenny's sleeve, tumbling into her palm at the opportune moment: 'and by the way, I told her the real reason for our union, and do you know what? I do believe she hates you more than ever for not confiding in her, isn't that charming? You betrayed her trust rather than her love, and so you lose the power of your sacrifice. You kissed and told – or rather, didn't tell – and she bade _me_ tell that she wants nothing more to do with you.'

"And she adores you?" He growled, not at all human and not at all to be trifled with.

"We at least have the mutual respect of business partners. And who knows what awaits her in Palm Beach? She's tolerably attractive and surely rich enough to get someone decent, not of your calibre, but someone to suit her. She's the type to command, don't you agree? Her poor husband will be henpecked until the day he dies."

"She'd never make the mistake of marrying someone weak enough to be commanded." But it was he that made the mistake, his tone that made the mistake of slipping into softness. "Unless they took turns commanding one another. She understands the value of losing control."

Dan's head snapped around to his sibling. "Does he love her?"

Jenny's non-existent breast heaved in a dramatic sigh. "Sadly, yes. And no amount of blackmail can stop him talking about it, so you might as well get used to it."

"And you married him?"

"And you have a new suit and a proper publisher as a result!"

Monkey trotted in, quite oblivious to the drama, seating himself on Chuck's feet and snuffling in a polite undertone. Chuck tried an absentminded nudge under the rump to shift him, but the dog stood – or sat – firm, casting a reproachful glance back at his master before dropping his nose onto his paws and settling in for a nap.

"We have more important business to discuss, in any case." Eyes, bright doll's eye blue, swivelled from brother to husband, made fervent by malice. "You've acknowledged you purchased that…thing to prove your devotion to her. What I wonder is whether there is something else you bought for her in my house, something that predates the dog. Something that predates our marriage. Something the very sight of might be offensive to me."

"Will I be penalised if I say a mirror?"

"You know precisely what I mean. Expensive, significant beyond compare, fitted to the finger of Blair Waldorf and no other?" Her voice wasn't so much a murmur as a snarl as she went on, "Did you really think I wouldn't find out? You're famous for never having returned it, despite the fact that no woman wears it, despite the fact that you pledged yourself to your wife with a different stone! Your position is indefensible."

"As ever, dear wife, your train of thought never fails to elude me."

"Where's the goddamned ring?" Jenny almost shrieked, and Dan jumped.

"On your finger."

"Not mine, fool! The one you got to give to her when you were too young to know better!"

"I'm still not old enough to know better," was Chuck's response. The end papers of his cigarette were smouldering, tobacco burnt up, and he deliberated letting them char his fingertips once again as a test of their sensitivity. He already knew the outcome, however, and so dropped the remains into an ashtray at his side. "And I don't have that ring anymore – the one I assume you're referring to, which was a cushion cut solitaire with side baguette stones. Blair does."

"You're lying."

"Prove me wrong," he challenged. "Find it. Or better still, ask Blair. Remind her of the cut and colour. I'm sure she's had dozens since then, but she may still remember an offering from the least of her swains."

_Jackson 'Palazzo', Gramercy Park  
>1897<em>

_She could see him, not quite human but not quite an apparition, a shadow between the doorway and yet another hall of mirrors. This place wasn't Italian, it was quite French, and Henry Jackson's behaviour was quite French enough for Blair's taste. She stared past him, over one broad shoulder as he pushed sloppily against her throat, trying for a kiss and ending with an unfortunate lick._

_This was the first time they'd seen one another since the opera, and this was another thing she thought she ought to try._

_Not with Chuck Bass in the doorway, of course. He was anomalous.  
><em>

"_I want to marry you._"

"_Goodness, Henry._" _She was more than a little exasperated. _"_You mustn't take things so seriously._"

"_Do you love me?_"

_Laughter was bitten back behind small white teeth, but only just. _"_I don't know you well enough. All I want is some fun._"

_This was hardly good sport, but Chuck Bass' expression was captivating: he seemed almost as amused as she was, as if they were co-conspirators, as if this were some scheme they'd cooked up to expose poor Henry Jackson and his disastrous wooing. His gaze held the look not of that lick, but of a long slow lick of flame that prompted Blair to lower her eyelashes before glancing his way again. He was still more amused, and it was beginning to irk her._

"_Oh, Henry,_"_ she tried, and heaved what was present of her still developing bosom in the hope of eliciting a response._

_Henry froze, choked, stopped still and made a strange and sudden sound; Chuck smirked like a cat with far too much cream in its possession._

_They three went back to the party without another word._

"_You made him spill._"

"_Go away!_"

_She was sipping water for appearance's sake, he something darker than wine. She toyed with the idea of sending an elbow smartly into his ribs and spilling the glass all over his pristine white shirtfront._

"_If two minutes with Blair Waldorf is enough to undo such a highly thought of young gentleman, it begs the question of who around here is man enough to handle you – or is that why you like to play solitaire in matters of satisfaction? You're only just out of babyhood._" _There was that flicker again, a look and a lick together._ "_And somehow only just in heat._"

"_How dare you._"

"_What shall we do with you, Miss Waldorf? Marry you off to someone who cools your blood? Or hide you behind the curtains with someone who sets it to boil?_"

"_No man makes me weak at the knees, I assure you._"

"_You're beautiful_,"_ he said frankly. _"_Beautiful, and naïve, and still a little too young to be taken."_

"_I'm more than ready for the world_," _Blair snapped, though she wasn't entirely sure what she was agreeing to. _"_Don't patronise me, Chuck Bass._"

"_Don't grow up too fast, Blair Waldorf_."

Dorota had packed her trunks, Serena her carpetbag for the train. Still Blair couldn't sleep, couldn't stop sifting through her piles of novels, ever indecisive about what to read on the train, what to read on the beach, what to read when she didn't want to face Daniel Humphrey, novelist, Jenny Bass, serpent, or Chuck Bass…she had no name for what he was because of what he had been, what he would always be in the parts of her heart she tried to iron flat with common sense. She'd decided to have no more to do with him, and that was that. They officially had no reason to interact beyond social niceties. And for all Blair's indecision, she trusted in Gossip Girl and the Gamesome Gallant to set her free. They were wreckers, and she'd always found destruction to be far more soothing than music to a savage breast.

So she dropped _Persuasion_ into her bag with the other titles, and dreamed with a sick curl of excited dread of what whirring wheels could do to bound pages and the message within them.

* * *

><p><strong><em>Happy Birthday to the Isa to my Bella, to whom this chapter is dedicated. Besos y felicitaciones a ti<em>**_**, mi companera! Feliz cumpleanos!  
>Thanks to:<strong>_** blair4eva, notoutforawalk, Breakfastinwonerland, MegamiTenchi, fiona249, flipped, SassySuzy84, Eternally Romantic, BellaB2010, SaturnineSunshine, thegoodgossipgirl, lulubelle2010, Maribells, dreamgurl, jwoo2525, , odyjha, abelard, Nikki999, thepluot _and_ Avschick33.**


	7. Queen Of Hearts

**6. Queen Of Hearts**

Bart Bass was either too dull or too arrogant to name the railroad carriage that had passed on to his son – they called it the Bass car, since that was what it was. Every prominent family in the state had such a wheeled residence, containing within it a fully stocked kitchen, dining room, a few staterooms and as many bedrooms as were required by family and guests. An observation deck protruded from its rear, giving a thrilling view of the world rushing away into the distance with only a wooden railing between man and merciless track. Then there were the quaint parts, the fussy parts: the rich wanted to live like the poor when it was fashionable, and had one large communal compartment with two sets of two opposing benches and two walls of large windows. There they could sit and watch the day go by, silently pretending that luxury and nourishment were far away down miles of corridor and not available at the ring of a bell.

"Is very humid in Florida, Miss Blair. You take care you no get bitten."

"Yes, Dorota."

"And Miss Serena too."

"Yes, Dorota."

"And this girl –" Dorota's eyes narrowed as Ivy, the van der Woodsens' maid whom the girls would be sharing, smiled apologetically. She was rather pretty, and her brown gaze was soft. She was also a pathological liar but, as Lily had pointed out, 'throwing her at Jenny might give you some sport'. "This girl has promised to tend to you properly, and see you properly dressed and arranged. Or she has me to answer to."

"Ivy will do just fine, Dorota, and Serena and I will be just fine." Blair took advantage of the mirror her own maid was holding up to sweep a stray hair away from her cheek and pull the netting atop her hat down and over her face. The lattice work shimmered slightly, glowing against her pale skin. Ivy checked an envious sigh and instead helped her employer's daughter retie the ribbon of her own wide-brimmed hat beneath her chin.

"I can't believe we're travelling with _the_ Daniel Humphrey," Serena breathed, apparently so excited by the prospect that she wriggled a little in her seat. "I have so many questions to ask, particularly about his portrayal of Elizabeth Holland: Diana is strong because she transforms a rich, handsome wastrel into a man who values love above all else, but Elizabeth, who runs away from family and comfort in New York, is still written as a timorous maiden despite the fact that she sacrifices all for love, lives rough, has her husband Will die in her arms, marries again to protect her unborn child and survives being drugged and held against her will!"

"Elizabeth does end up with the right man, though," countered Blair, drawing upon her very recent review of Mr Humphrey's catalogue. "Teddy always loved her, and after Will she learns to love him in return. Henry will never exchange familiarity for Diana, and every attempt he makes to get away from Penelope ends up dragging him back to New York and into her lap."

"You can't blame Henry for that!"

"Henry should take responsibility for being Henry once in a while."

"Diana should stop being so contrary once in a while."

"Elizabeth should stop thinking she knows what's best for everyone for once in her life!"

Their driver gave a discreet cough, and Dorota glanced out of the window. "The train should be here by now, Miss Blair. You are due to meet…Mrs Bass on the platform so all guests can be 'checked' before you board her carriage. They should check her," she added with a haughty sniff. "See if she still has servant's hands under her fine gloves before she dares to sit anywhere near a Waldorf. Your mother would have walked to Palm Beach rather than travelled with that kind of person."

"And my mother now resides in Paris and doesn't care what I do." Blair leant impulsively forward and kissed her former nursemaid's cheek. "But thank _you_ for caring, Dorota. Please make sure Jimmy gets our luggage safely stowed, he hasn't been around long enough to know how it should be done."

"Yes, Miss Blair."

Blair smiled at the young man, hardly more than a boy who helped her down and into the station. He was her latest charity case, as Jenny had been, only this one had been subjected to a rigorous interview with Dorota and half the kitchen staff. He was filling out nicely after only a week or two in the Waldorf household, knots of muscle forming beneath the skin of his forearms, and he blushed beetroot red as first Blair thanked him and then Serena. Ivy hopped out of her own accord, spent a moment or two arranging the finer points of two long skirts, then shadowed her charges unto the platform proper. They had to be directed by a porter who was then relieved of this duty by the station manager, sweating profusely with a gold watch chain gleamed as brightly as his fevered gaze.

"I shall go and see about your party," he puffed, and then dashed off like a white rabbit late for an appointment in Wonderland.

"Lord –"

"Serena…"

"Do we sincerely frighten people that much? Simply by being ourselves?"

"The idea of all of us being ourselves in an enclosed space frightens me."

"Blair." Serena wrapped a companionable arm around her friend's waist and squeezed. "We're five souls and a dog in one carriage. What could possibly go wrong?"

The crowd's scent was of tobacco, sweat, the treatment spread on furs, mingling perfumes from the mingling of rich and poor which released both cheap and sweet aromas. Even without such a clash, Blair was in more than enough discomfort, her stomach pulled up and behind her ribs as a sick consequence of vanity, vanity that had prompted her to try to best Jenny today. She laid a habitual hand on her strictly laced midriff and watched jets of steam spurt out from the train like geysers only a few feet away. First Dan passed through one plume, his coat too light for the season, then Jenny avoided the vapour, skittering away and seizing her brother's arm only once they were clear.

Then came Chuck.

Blair dropped her eyes.

"What could possibly go wrong," she repeated as their party advanced like the train itself and she, despite Serena's presence, felt like something small and frantic caught in the middle of the tracks and about to meet its maker.

_**~#~**_

They'd been travelling for two hours or so, slumped on seats upholstered in red velvet – Jenny had redecorated for the occasion – or, in Monkey's case, casting about for something of a consistency pleasant to chew on. Serena had donated her most worn slipper, but his response had been underwhelming; she exchanged it for a small pot of cream from her carpetbag, whose label suggested application every three hours to prevent 'skin fatigued by continuous motion'. After smoothing it over her hands and wrists, she had fallen asleep on Blair's shoulder, her fair head a pretty tableau against that dark one. Blair herself was busy reading a French translation of the Art of War. Every now and again, her lips would move, sounding out a word, and Serena would huff quietly as she was disturbed.

Jenny had her eyes slitted like an indolent cat's, but she wasn't blind. A silver mink collar stroked her throat and flirted with the pallor of her hair, her skin, the black defining her lashes. She had her legs drawn up beneath her in a most unladylike display, but there was enough black skirt to cover them and enough coat on top of that. It wasn't cold, but Chuck's obligatory seat beside her seemed to radiate it. He'd darted looks towards Blair, slivers of half-looks when he thought his wife wasn't watching, and had then fallen asleep with his face turned towards hers. How Jenny hated Blair, hated her sensible striped skirt and her plain white shirtwaist and the discreetly sized diamond sparkling in each ear.

"Dan," she whispered, and he laid down his jotter and came to her side.

"Jen?"

"Miss Waldorf is bored. Take her to the dining car and play with her."

"The dining room's empty until they serve lunch."

"Not our dining room." Her teeth flashed. "The public dining car. Give her a little taste of the wilder side of life."

Dan paused only a moment before returning his sister's smile. He resumed his seat on the opposite side of the compartment, the place where he'd installed himself for a rousing discussion with Miss van der Woodsen on the merits of Miss Elizabeth Holland – she had controversial views on the subject, and his were equally controversial and appalling to her – and cleared his throat. Blair shot him a sharp look.

"Miss van der Woodsen is asleep, Mr Humphrey," she rebuked her hostess' brother, which no doubt broke some kind of code of etiquette. "You may continue your conversation at a later date."

"It's you I'd like to spend time with."

"How kind – but, as you can see, I have a prior engagement with Sun Tzu."

"I'd like to take you to the dining car," Dan pressed, disregarding her objections here as he had in the restaurant only days before. "Your friend the journalist was of the opinion I know nothing of the world I write about, an opinion I'm guessing you share." Her mouth refused to quirk, though his did in automatic anticipation of her amusement. "But I'm also guessing you know nothing of mine. You've never been to a public bar or a public concert or drunk from anything other than a glass served up on a hallmarked tray. I'd like to take you to the dining car because I believe you might like to come out of yourself and experience new things, and perhaps you might teach me the truth of what I send to my publisher."

Jenny shuffled over to press her arm against Chuck's, and Blair only blinked her reaction.

"I'll come with you, Mr Humphrey," she replied, levering Serena off her shoulder and gently positioning her against the padded rest.

The dining car was noisy and smoky, exactly as Jenny had anticipated. Dan ordered two beers and handed one to Blair, who stared as if it might snap at her fingers.

"I haven't a glass."

"You don't need one."

But Blair refused to do anything but toy with the bottle as they took a seat at a table where two soldiers were shuffling a deck of cards. The younger might've been handsome, but he was so worn and tired that his face better resembled an old man's. The elder had a drooping moustache and sunken cheeks, which meant the long wisps of hair appeared to fall backwards instead of down.

"Ma'am." The elder touched his brow in salute. "I fear you've lost yourself."

"This is the dining car, yes?"

"It's no place for you, if you'll excuse the familiarity."

"Maybe the gentleman is right," Dan hedged. "Maybe I was wrong to –"

"Oh, save your breath to cool your porridge, Humphrey," Blair retorted, much to the surprise of everyone in the dining car, including herself. To the soldier, "Thank you for your concern, sir, but I came here with a purpose in mind." That purpose was actually digging dirt on Dan, but these selfless gentlemen didn't need to know that. As long as he believed he was making progress with her, he could be read like an open book. She knew the kind.

"A purpose, ma'am?"

"Poker, sir."

He saluted her again, and Dan choked on his beer. To shame him, Blair took a large swig of the – admittedly repugnant – beverage. It was bitter and to her held the flavour of nothing but foul water, but the men sitting all around quietened in their lewd commentary and lapsed into a semi-respectful quasi-silence.

"I prefer champagne, Humphrey," she told him in an undertone. "And you're paying my way."

Blair was nonetheless graceful enough to be gentle with those who had fought for her country and so, teasing them gently, seemed to win every round somehow by the tips of her fingers. Her poker face was the only face of hers Dan had seen until today, slightly puckered brows as if the letters and colours in her hand displeased her. He was startled and very nearly intrigued by the girl who offered hand dyed cigarettes from the pocket of her skirt as if it were nothing, not smoking herself but following the scent with the turn of her head like a hound after familiar spoor. She couldn't bring herself to drink more than half her bottle of beer, but chimed the neck companionably with anyone who made a toast in her direction. She was, in short, not Blair Waldorf; she was rejoicing in it for a short while, here among perfect and virtual strangers, almost forgetting herself and that she was a lady and who it was that had taught her to play poker.

"This has to be the most sinful thing you've ever done," Dan remarked, pushing his chips forward to match the previous bet. "The drinking, the gambling…"

"It's not."

"Then what is? You can tell me. After all, we're all but friends now."

Her mouth set like a trap. "I did wonder about that, Dan Humphrey, so let's be clear: you know what side your bread is buttered, and so do I. You and your sister shouldn't make the grave error of trying to weasel out the secrets of my heart."

"Who's to say you have secrets?" He equivocated.

"Who's to say I have a heart?" Blair's flipped her cards to reveal a queen and a knave to match the ace, king and ten in the flop, river and turn. All were scarlet, and all belonged, ironically enough, to the suit of hearts.

Dan reached out for her hand.

"Blair."

They both leapt to attention like toy soldiers, her spine made of Park Avenue Princess steel only just allowing itself to slouch. She wasn't blushing, and neither was he – she'd had no intention of letting him touch her and planned to make that transparent to him later on, at length if necessary – but there was that guilty rise of hair on the back of her neck, the slip-side of trepidation down into her stomach that had nothing to do with beer or the soldiers who were now coughing, lowering their gazes, shuffling their cards. That alone was enough to counteract her disquiet, and she twisted in her seat to rebut a dark expression with a long and level look of her own.

"What are you doing in here?"

"Mr Humphrey and I were playing a few games of cards," Blair returned coolly. "Now, if you'll excuse us –"

"No."

Chuck stood between her and the door, though it may as well have been between heaven and earth for all the power he possessed in that room of lesser beings. He was a little rumpled from sleep, a little whiter than usual, a little less in control. Dan wasn't sure he had ever seen his brother-in-law in full control of himself, but Blair's blasé response to this intrusion was ostensibly not the one which was required to keep Chuck on a long leash so he wasn't close enough to bite. They were not quite similar enough to resemble one another in appearance, but on top of the polish which betrayed them as members of the elite, there was an anger, a hunger visible even to Dan's untrained gaze. If he wanted to snap, so did she. She too had teeth and claws only restrained by breeding and birth.

"No?" It came as cool as ever, though she was sinking rapidly towards ice. "I don't believe you have any jurisdiction over where I go or what I do, Mr Bass."

"It's inappropriate for you to be here, among these –"

"Mr Humphrey is a well-known author, and your wife's brother besides. The gentlemen with whom I've been playing cards are on their way home from the Pacific. These other gentlemen have shown me nothing but politeness and affability. In any case…" She raised the still sloshing beer bottle to her mouth and gulped. "Why should it be of any import to you what I do, even if it does involve other men?"

"Miss…Blair," Dan cautioned.

She wouldn't be checked.

"You should leave, you know." Her colour had changed, flaring up with roses in her cheeks and lips. "You're causing a scene."

She was, as she'd ever been, in her element while out of temper with him. Chuck studied her flush, her bright eyes, the swell and slump of rapid breathing and the _bump-bump-bump_ of a pulse above the hollow of her throat: Blair. He couldn't imagine a day when he wouldn't be watching Blair, far or near, be that in physical distance or in distance from her heart. He was ten thousand miles away from her at least, remote enough to stop her daring in its tracks and feel no remorse. "You two are quite enough of a scene without my help." Nonchalant, delivered with a curl of the lip; hers didn't even tremor.

Chuck left silence in the dining car behind him, and Dan swore he could smell the whiff of soon to be consumed single malt.

"Take me back to my seat, Mr Humphrey," said Blair quietly.

He was only too happy to oblige.

_**~#~**_

Mrs Jennifer Bass sat at the dining table in her matrimonial railroad car in a saffron coloured evening gown and waited.

And waited.

A note from the steward: her husband wasn't coming to dinner.

By way of Miss van der Woodsen, ethereally pretty in white and lilac frills: Blair had a migraine and wouldn't be joining them for dinner. She didn't want a tray, or company, though the offer of either was graciously acknowledged and gracefully declined. A few hours of rest and recuperation in the bunk opposing Serena's was all she needed to get used to the train's motion and soothe eyes overtired by reading.

"Palm Beach will revive her," Serena assured their hostess. "All she needs is fresh air and sunshine."

Jenny felt somewhat uncharitable towards Serena, who was clearly in need of neither fresh air nor sunshine. Her skin glowed of its own accord, as if it might be warm to the touch, and no amount of pins could keep strands of mingling gold from tumbling down around her ears. How she and Blair, those famous 'beauties' could stand one another's company was a mystery to Jenny, whose own jealousy would've had her tearing their hair out after only a few hours of friendship. She was preparing to grumble when her brother arrived, and instead found herself irrationally irritated by the fact that he was there and Blair wasn't. This seduction had to work, or else the soft winds and balminess of Florida so early in the year might tempt her rival into romance with the wrong person entirely.

"How are you enjoying this mode of travel?" Dan asked Serena as their jellied soup was served and she took a demure sip.

"It's wonderful. I want constantly to be out on the observation deck watching the world go by, don't you? But Blair refuses to go with me, she read a journal article about a girl who leant on the railings and almost ended her days beneath the train."

"Is she so easily frightened?"

"Blair is never afraid," Serena told him, though her enunciation of each word was for Jenny's benefit. "She doesn't believe that it will happen to her, she's far too canny to risk herself by leaning on anything in the first place."

"Anything or anyone?"

"Why –" Jenny's expression was one of extreme astonishment. "What are you insinuating, Dan? Forgive me, Serena, but it seems as though my brother is trying to ascertain as to whether dear Blair has a beau at the moment."

"Blair objects to the idea of a beau."

"And yet the gentlemen press her for waltz after waltz and let their faces linger so close to her neck…"

Serena deliberately let her spoon clatter against the bowl as it was removed, eliciting a theatrical wince from Jenny on behalf of the tableware. "Blair objects to the idea of a beau," she repeated. "Since she is of the old school which believes in love above all, true love, not fly-by-night love. She dances with the young men who ask her to because she is a lady and because she takes pleasure from music, but she wouldn't even offer her cheek to a man she didn't love and wasn't promised to." More tendrils fell as she turned her head, bouncing before Serena's blue eyes before she swept them briskly away. "And if you, Mr Humphrey, wish to pursue my friend, then you may ask her herself if she has a beau, or what she requires in a companion. I would rather not be a go-between and be blamed for your unhappiness at some later date."

"You don't think, then, that I could be the cause of Miss Waldorf's unhappiness, not she of mine?"

"I don't believe you have it in you to treat her poorly, but Blair would treat you as one of our set: very hard, as if you were auditioning for a part in a play she was directing. Will Keller is the outsider in your books, so I suppose he is the person you identify with most; but observing how our Diana goes about her business won't provide any insight as to what is in her mind or in her heart. She isn't an Elizabeth, like I am."

The candle flames enhanced and reflected back her high colour, her vivid gaze, her absolute focus on educating Daniel Humphrey about Blair Waldorf and protecting them from one another's affection or censure. To Dan, Serena van der Woodsen had the creamy texture of a painting, not of a young woman at all. She wasn't rounded enough for a Venus or wood nymph, not severe enough for a Madonna or crooked enough for a witch. She was a different kind of art, he surmised, the kind that blinked and fidgeted with a turquoise bracelet beneath his scrutiny.

"And she has such a loyal friend in you," came as a coo from Jenny, who had had far too small a part in this conversation to her reckoning. "I'm only saddened the poor thing couldn't join us for dinner. We must feed her up," she continued as several slices of wafer thin roast beef were lowered onto her plate. "Perhaps if she's stouter, she'll have a stouter constitution, and she could be much comelier with a little more meat on her bones. More wine, Serena?"

"No, thank you."

"Why ever not? It's a marvellous vintage."

Dan had to clench his jaw on both mirth and outrage as his sister's guest replied, "I haven't a taste for sour grapes."

Dinner was taking its time, though Blair, as she rolled over in her bunk to survey the ceiling. Sleep had come and gone in a brief half hour with another thirty minutes of wakefulness on either side, leading to pin and needles alertness in her limbs but a heavy, drowsy feeling clogging her brain and slowing her to the speed of meditation. It had been defiance, not a migraine that had sent her to bed, with her plan being to sleep all the way to Florida and damn Chuck and his high-handed orders. He needed a taste of life without her, that was for sure – she was similarly sure this vacation wasn't going to be a clear cut annunciation of separation whatsoever. He would try to win her back, wind her back around his fingers, and her only escape appeared to be Daniel Humphrey, who wasn't even to be considered. Who knew what game the siblings were playing, for all Blair was safe in the knowledge that she would have no part in it. She stared upwards with her unbound hair drifting around her shoulders and the mattress rattling beneath her, and decided that now was as good a time as any to break one specific bond.

Everyone was at dinner, but still Blair moved down the hallway on silent slippered feet, pulling a gauzy white peignoir tight around her shoulders. The dining room was in the other direction, and the Bass and Humphrey bedrooms were beyond it. They were separated from men and married people as if one or the other was leprous, as if it were a crime not to have found someone and be sharing their bed. The marital compartment was supposedly luxurious, which bothered Blair not in the slightest and in no way had her ill-wishing Jenny with cold sheets, cold washing water, a broken bedstead and floorboards which vibrated and kept her awake and uncomfortable all night long –

At least, that was what she told herself.

The doors onto the observation deck opened smoothly and closed of their own accord, shutting Blair out in a cold blue evening without stars. She shivered and took another step, her first having carried her outside, placing her feet carefully so as to avoid any cracks in the juddering floor. To accomplish her task, she needed to be close enough to the railing for her arm to extend into the breach, but not so close that the train's motion would throw her into the barrier or possibly over it. It rose only to the waist, giving the horrible sensation that imbalance between upper and lower body weight might be one's undoing. As such, Blair halted maybe a foot away and stretched out. _Persuasion_ trembled in her hand, hovering above the rushing tracks, all its connotations and hateful inscriptions locked inside, seeming to all the world to be an innocent novel that had never done anyone any harm.

"Don't fall."

Blair didn't, but her heart did very nearly leap from her chest.

"You idiot!" She hailed him over her shoulder. "You don't surprise someone standing at the edge of a platform!"

Chuck came to her side and she refused to even glance in his direction. He was as unwelcome to her as the bite of the wind whipping her hair back from her cheeks, and he didn't deserve her attention since she hadn't invited him to come.

"What's that?"

"A book."

"I can see that."

"Then why ask?"

"I presumed the implications of 'what's that' wouldn't be lost on you, in that it's usually followed by questions about what exactly you're doing and why exactly you're doing it."

"I'm planning to throw the book you gave me as a provocative birthday gift onto the tracks, with any luck getting it beneath the wheels and crushing it back to wood pulp," Blair stated rather too calmly.

"Your motivation being?"

"It means as little to me as you do, but you're too heavy for me to throw."

"I didn't intend to embarrass you in front of Dan Humphrey," he said sourly. "If you want to drink beer in a public dining car –"

"I'm making a fool of myself over beer, Chuck, of course I am!" She still wouldn't look at him, but what ought to have been presented to him in her expression was evident from her tone. "Not because you didn't think to tell me that your marriage to Jenny came not out of love, but of trying to protect me, as if I were some part of you that you didn't want amputated. Not because for months, you allowed me to believe that I'd given you what you wanted since the day you came back, my complete and utter humiliation, and that was all you'd ever want from me. Not because you act as if we have a future though you treat me a child and don't trust me enough to know the truth, when you expect me to be your mistress and bend the knee to your wife!"

Chuck exhaled, twisted away as if he could feel her anger as heat and turned his face into the wind, back to the tracks. "I never came to you for my own self-interest. I wish to God I'd never come to you at all, so Jenny had no power and we wouldn't be in this mess."

"There is no we in this mess. Only you and I."

"Only you and I is stronger than you understand."

"Don't patronise me, I do understand. I understand you perfectly."

"Then you should understand that I would give anything, trade anything, kill or maim or hunt down any man if it meant you would be happy. But I, above all things, am a selfish beast. And I want you to be happy with me." Chuck discovered that he'd forgotten how to smile, that it was unfamiliar and strange even to attempt it. "I promise to find a way out of this. I'll find a way for you and I." Silently he reached out, bridging the void between them to tuck a wayward curl back behind her right ear. A cloud drifted away from the moon, and suddenly they were both lit up in silver, gleaming like the scales of expensive fish in a usurious pond. _Persuasion_ jumped as the wrist supporting the hand supporting its spine struggled, then slowly retracted from the railing and back to the relative safety of the platform.

"No," Blair rebuked him, though it was a reprimand spoken with more exhaustion than venom and her mouth forming a small soft shape in response. "Only my husband gets to touch my hair." She pushed the novel into the hand he'd let fall. "Please don't try to give this back to me."

Then she walked away from him, through the double doors, back down the dim corridor.

It was the ache in her gullet from the scent of his wife's dinner that warned her not to look back.

* * *

><p><strong><em>Thanks to: <em>Laura, flipped, fiona249, Eternally Romantic, dreamgurl, MegamiTenchi, present. tense, katharienne, lulubelle2010, Stella296, thepluot, SaturnineSunshine, thegoodgossipgirl, L, notoutforawalk, teddy bear, BellaB2010, ggloverxx19 _and _Nikki999._ A surprising amount of you want Jenny under the wheels of the train. Bravo. Your hatred is truly admirable, but believe me, no way near as passionate as mine. I have to write the bitch._**


	8. Little One

**7. Little One**

"Dear Elise, she's taken so poorly to the motion of the train." Jenny pulled a skein of hair back over one shoulder and lit her first cigarette of the day, staining its end with lip colour before the business end was even lit. Against the pale light filtering through the shutter slats and her cream coloured kimono, her mouth looked quite dark and desperate by comparison. "And while there are maids on call, what one's friends know is very nearly as good as what oneself knows, don't you agree?" She gestured with her ciggie, performing a circle with her wrist that formed first a ring of fire and then smoke in the air. "So I said to myself, I'll summon Miss van der Woodsen and Miss Waldorf's maid to help me dress, she'll more than suit. And so you do."

Ivy self-consciously touched a strand of her own hair before tucking it away beneath her cap. "Thank you, Mrs Bass."

"We could be excellent friends, I think."

"If you say so, Mrs Bass."

"I should like to be your friend, Ivy. Then we could share secrets. Friends share secrets." The lady's eyes were huge and brilliant, far-flung sky blue swimming in too much white; Ivy didn't trust her, nor the translucent robe slung so casually across her bony shoulders. Only an hour earlier, Miss Waldorf had risen and donned a similar robe, then explained its origins and, quietly, the loss of her father – and, as young ladies of a particular class sometimes did, had taken up yesterday's gloves from her vanity and handed them to Ivy. 'Kidskin,' she'd said. 'I shan't be needing them again. Would you like them?' The delicate material was softer than a kiss against hands hardened by starch and lye, and Ivy knew well and good that Miss Waldorf's heart had been hardened against her hostess. Thus, so too would be Ivy's, and she would be hard-hearted and hard-eyed and put her God-given talent for lying to good use.

"I do say so." Jenny had no apparent interest in getting dressed, only in having the maid in her presence. She exhaled smoke and gulped down a cough. "And if we're to be friends and share secrets with one another, you have to tell me something."

"Ma'am?"

"What are Miss Waldorf's feelings for my brother?"

_**~#~**_

"Don't be silly, S." Blair was already packing, folding last night's clothes back into the press and trunk with her lace cuffs spilling onto everything she touched. Her dress was red, the same shade as her flashing ruby, too bright for the early morning but with a particular purpose behind it that was unknown to Serena. "I remain as unaffected by Mr Humphrey's presence as I ever was, less, if at all possible. He's far too sure of himself and his apparent rapport with me for my liking, though he is witty, I grant you that." Her kimono lay discarded on the bunk, and she scrunched it in her hands rather than folding it, a most un-Blair-like action that didn't escape Serena's notice.

"If it's not Mr Humphrey, then it's something else. You're jangling."

"Jangling? Don't be modern, it doesn't suit you."

"On edge. Tense. Irritable. I know you didn't have a migraine yesterday, though Lord knows being caught between Charles Bass and Daniel Humphrey would be enough to make my head ache – but not yours. Something else happened." Serena's voice lowered. "Did some_one_ happen?"

"What on earth can you mean?"

"Neither of you were at dinner."

"Meaning?"

"Blair."

"Blair what?"

"Blair, were you with Chuck directly beneath the nose of his wife?"

Ironically enough, Blair snorted. "I'm not suicidal, nor am I stupid. And Chuck wouldn't know how to be with me if I drew him a map and wrote him a script. He's incorrigible, yes, but no less insensible than before. He refuses to take responsibility for his actions, for all he would take them back or pray God to take them away from him. Then he would ask me to risk my immortal soul for love of him! But this is old ground, you know it is. He's performed his piece, and I mine."

"But you love him."

"So you say."

"So Chuck says."

"So everyone seems to say but me!"

_**~#~**_

"So everyone says, ma'am."

"Miss Waldorf and the journalist…they _are_ often seen together." Jenny tapped an ivory comb against her lips, inadvertently staining its creamy surface crimson. In the interim between the birth and death of Ivy's 'confession', she'd allowed herself to be dressed in a pleated skirt with a heavy black and white fur trim and a fashionable blouse with epaulettes on the shoulders. She twirled the massive emerald on her finger back and forth over and again, then nibbled at the corner of the stone as if its authenticity might prove Ivy's story to be true. "But their being in love doesn't help me at all." Her gaze rose as if to entreat Heaven. "You may go, Dickens."

"But…ma'am…"

"You didn't honestly think I was going to tell you a secret in return, did you?" Jenny grinned genuine glee, genuine spite at this naïve girl – so like herself not too long before, pressed into a golden gown and pressed into doing Blair's bidding at a scandalous party held by her now husband. How sweet it was to be the one holding the dice, playing the cards, she reflected as she turned back to the mirror to apply blacking to the tips of her lashes. What she didn't observe, therefore, was Ivy turning her back and the expression of shock, almost of hurt on her pretty face melting into a quirk of the lips and a queer, sharp smile.

Ivy liked to lie.

But Ivy didn't like liars.

_**~#~**_

Breakfast was more subdued than it should have been for such gay young travellers, too many grey faces, grey shadows beneath eyes and grey chinned gentlemen. Jenny immediately protested; Dan claimed to have already shaved, and Chuck cast a disparaging glance in her direction without even appearing to lift his lids. "I'm thinking of growing a beard," was all he said.

"How very outmoded."

He made no answer.

Serena cleared her throat and asked for orange juice, filling Blair's glass as well as her own. Blair wrapped both hands around the receptacle as if it might give out heat and warm the fingers beneath her neat lace gloves. They ended in a frill at her wrist, displaying a small bump of bone and network of pearly violet veins before the sleeve began – it was upon this that Dan tried to focus. In all he'd written and read, it was the little things which were supposed to promote attraction, with personal preference ranging from a penchant for slender, nicely turned ankles to wisps of hair overhanging the frail nape of the neck. He saw nothing more than veins, however, a want of robustness and happiness which made Blair seem to him more pitiable than desirable. His feelings toward her waxed more fraternal, even paternal at the prominence of those bones, but it wasn't as if Jenny had requested that he fall in love with her – only that he go about making her fall for him.

"Some butter with your croissant, Miss Waldorf?"

"Thank you, but this is buttery enough."

The train lurched, and their shoulders knocked together. Dan doubted she knew how the pastry tasted, despite her comment, as most of it covered her plate and the tines of her fork in a mess of flakes.

"You don't have much of an appetite this morning."

"It's the fashion for young ladies to eat like starving birds, isn't it?" She took a swallow of juice as if to underline her point.

"My sister believes you should eat more for the good of your health."

"More, I firmly believe that." Jenny would never be so uncouth as to lean, but the angle of her head slanted across the table towards Blair. She twisted a grape from the stem and popped it into her mouth, fulfilling her own quota of breakfast for the day. Anything more would have been gluttony, greed, and detrimental to her desire to have the smallest waist in New York by the end of that summer. "Your features appear quite sunken."

"Do they."

Blair's didn't speak as a question, and she fixated upon the tablecloth as the train juddered once again and the juice lurched in its decanter. She lurched along with it, unused to the motion and unused to rising at this hour to do anything but confirm her fears with nausea. She knew the truth now, of course, but still couldn't shake the desire to vomit every morning at the same time. Her stomach was swollen with sorrow and rage, not with fancies, though today's swollen was slimmer and flatter than yesterday's curves of contentment. Trying to swallow her sentiments wouldn't assuage them, wouldn't subtract Jenny and Dan and Chuck, above all Chuck whom she had refused to acknowledge the night before and who'd thankfully been returning the favour until that moment, the instant she knew she'd turned the colour of whey. If what he was doing could be called staring, it was of a very quiet and unobtrusive kind. She imagined once again the pressure of his hand upon her hair, and then her anger was twofold and tenfold and she was ramming her chair back before anyone could pull it out for her.

"Excuse me."

"Your work, I suppose," Jenny addressed her husband as she took a sip of coffee. It rattled as she set it down.

"Jen," Dan began.

"You may go," his sister commanded, flapping her hands at the servants waiting by either door to serve or see to the ladies. They attempted to bow, to return their salvers to the sideboard, but her only response was to bark, "Go! Get out!" Then her fingers lay flat upon the tablecloth, as white as she was with rage.

Chuck took the opportunity to calmly pour himself some orange juice. "What exactly provoked that little tantrum, dearest? And why should Miss Waldorf's departure be in any way my fault? Unless the sight of an unshaven man offends her, in which case she was right to leave."

"As if you don't know."

"I'm afraid I have no idea."

"You can't take your eyes off her!" Jenny ejaculated, her fingernails now digging into the linen itself. "Poor Blair, can't eat with us because we nauseate her, won't come to dinner when you don't come to dinner, picks apart her food like a starving martyr while you watch her like a hungry animal! You disgust me, both of you!" The silence in the dining room was yet another goad in Jenny's side, so she hurled the cream pitcher across the room and took great pleasure in seeing it smash and every member of the company wince. "And you only pay me attention when I behave like this," she added petulantly. "When I behave inappropriately for the company we now keep."

"The company we now keep includes Miss van der Woodsen, documenter of my many ills against Miss Waldorf throughout the years, and your brother," Chuck replied with a curl of the lip. "Your fits of pique manifest only in front of those you trust to keep quiet about them, which conveniently doesn't include Miss Waldorf, so I wouldn't suggest laying the blame at my door simply because you're jealous of a girl who has prettier dresses than you."

"She has your ring," Jenny accused.

"As do you."

"Mine is a symbol of a legally binding contract."

"Then hers must be the symbol of nothing at all." Brushing a chip of broken china and a spot of cream from his shoe with that day's newspaper, Chuck stood. Serena studied the angle of light across his jaw, but could penetrate no deeper than the first layer of skin and the expression of stoicism without. Blair could judge his mien and he hers after less than a moment in each other's company, but Serena felt no electricity and her breath failed to stop when she looked upon Chuck. This close scrutiny gave her quite a fright when he spoke again, without warmth or chill or any inflection at all. "I expect propriety at all times when we're in Palm Beach, Jenny, no matter what crippling torment you may undergo because you weren't the first girl to ever stumble and fall at my feet."

"I never fell at anyone's feet!" snapped Jenny.

Dan stood and opened the door in the hope of ending the conflict, and Chuck made to walk through it. He paused in the doorframe, however, and both Humphreys caught a flicker of something naked and painful crossing his face before it was once more shrouded in what one might fancifully call strength.

"For your own edification: neither did she."

_**~#~**_

_While I miss my beloved Gallant as much as New York misses me, I find solace in all the gossip there is to be had here: Miss B visited the public dining car to commend a soldier or two for his service, and stayed for cards. She is often seen – or is that caught? – in the company of Mr DH, and appears to be teaching him city manners, something neither he nor his sister seem to possess…or so the servers at breakfast tell it._

_You know you love me._

Blair paused, tapping her pen against her lower lip. Those last words, now indelible, now lost from her head to her hand, had come unbidden. Was it a greeting to Asher, who'd read and chuckle at her bile before sending it onwards? Were they for Dan Humphrey, who might stay away if he believed her infatuation with him was so evident that this unseen blabbermouth could spy it even from around the corner? Were they for Jenny, a sour twist on a sourer missive? If they were worse and, like a shivering compass needle, she permitted her thoughts to swing back to Chuck, was she hoping that the insinuation about her and another man would help or hinder him? Draw him to her or push him away? It wasn't Blair's wish to be the type of person who played with hearts like worms on fishing hooks, but her heart had been played with and maybe that had made her cruel. Maybe she just wanted him to be hollow as far down as she was.

A knock on the compartment door made her start.

"Serena?"

"Me, Miss Waldorf." Ivy entered and closed the door quietly behind her without being asked; Blair didn't have it in her to be scandalised. "Forgive me for being pert, but there's something I must tell you before you go back out to join Mrs Bass and the others."

"Which is?"

"Mrs Bass asked me to help dress her this morning."

"And?"

"She sat at her vanity and wanted to know things about you instead." Her voice rose almost to the timbre of excitement as she continued, "Firstly about whether your affections lay with Mr Humphrey, which I denied – forgive me, ma'am, but it's clear to everyone that you don't favour him, save as as a sparring partner – and then where I surmised they were if not with him. I keep my own counsel and opinion on that, so I told her I thought you might love Mr Hornsby, that journalist Mrs van der Woodsen invited to a party for, begging your pardon, 'Blair's benefit'." She smiled sheepishly. "If we can't talk about Miss van der Woodsen, we like to talk about you, Miss Waldorf. It was so fine when the Gamesome Gallant decided you would marry Mr Bass, so Miss van der Woodsen would be a bridesmaid…"

Jenny had had no bridesmaids. And yet… "Most of New York found the actual Mrs Bass' nuptials very fine. Still –" Blair regarded the girl gingerly, as one would a dog that has rolled over to be stroked when it usually bites. "Thank you very much, Ivy. You've done me a great service."

"You gave me your gloves," Ivy responded, surprising her short-term employer.

"To do otherwise would be to waste them."

This time, the maid's smile was true. "That means you don't consider me a waste."

They resumed the traditional roles, silent server and taciturn pseudo-princess as Ivy pinned a hat onto Blair's head – it was hardly a hat, concealing only her pensive gaze behind a fine mesh which brushed her lashes and which was secured neatly behind one ear. She'd been expected in the communal compartment at least ten minutes beforehand, for breakfast had to be finished by now. There would be no trips to the public dining car and no drinking today, so she selected three books and allowed her skirt to be adjusted before processing, a little pompously, down the hallway. Her feathers had been ruffled by both her time on the observation platform and by breakfast with the Humphrey-Basses, and her automatic response was what any polished lady's ought to be: to rise up, puff up against the threat and sharpen one's teeth.

Unfortunately, there was a dog in her seat.

"Blair," Serena greeted her, giving the recalcitrant mutt a nudge in the rump. "He won't move, I've tried."

"You could –"

"No thank you, Mr Humphrey."

"Such a shame."

"Thank you, Mrs Bass." Blair didn't even bother glancing in Jenny's direction, preferring to descend to a crouch that was impossible to execute with elegance. "Monkey," she said calmly, her tone perfectly measured. "Would you be so kind as to surrender my seat?"

In reply, he lightly bumped his wet nose against Blair's. She blinked.

"I assume that's a no."

"I hope you're aware that this is ridiculous, B."

"I'm more than aware, S. Now, Monkey: I have no idea what first attracted to my seat, but I promise you it can be easily replicated elsewhere. Somewhere warm, somewhere comfortable…"

"It's not that."

"No?"

Chuck was her opposite, his eyes free to roam while his nose, mouth, the run of expensive clothing down his chest was hidden behind an open newspaper. His examination came free, as Jenny was glaring at the dog and Blair was gazing into its equally brown eyes. They were alike in their lack of understanding of one another, Monkey and she, though there was no comparison between rough, choppy fur and the smooth flow of curls restrained to suit society if not its possessor. It would certainly suit him to have it loose, wrapped around his fingers again; his mouth went dry, and he very nearly spat the sentimentality out at her. Her feelings on the subject were transparent enough, and his ought to have responded by now. Yet his pain was the same pain as ever, and his determination was all the stronger.

"It's not the position or the cushion," he continued. "He likes the scent you wear. I assume it's neither overly floral nor rich in musk." Not that he would know, of course. "And since no other lady here will be wearing a scent assuredly produced for your sole use, he chose your seat."

"How unfortunate." The tilt of her head revealed an inch more of cheek, the slight cleft in the centre of her lower lip, but her expression was still a mystery behind her hat mesh. "Since I've changed my perfume since yesterday." Since the scent of her had been on the night wind, painted on the flesh he'd touched and tainted. That memory had tortured him for hours, and he'd washed and rewashed his hands and chafed his fingertips raw in the hope of ridding himself of it.

"What a miserable creature he'll be."

"Perhaps he should sit by you, being your pet."

"Put the idea to him, why don't you. Your communion with him gives me so much pleasure."

"Serena," Blair snapped. "Share your seat with me." She settled into the vacated space, and Chuck settled back behind his paper.

His mouth was drier than dust.

"Miss van der Woodsen?" This time it was Dan who spoke up, laying aside his notebook and the stub of a pencil he preferred to a proper pen. "Would you care to take a stroll with me? No further than the dining room and back."

The tension in the room was making Serena's scalp prickle. "Thank you, Mr Humphrey."

They moved slowly down the corridor, and Serena was surprised to find that the tingling she'd attributed to a dog fight brewing between Chuck and Blair and a cat fight between her best friend and Jenny was persisting, and spreading all down her right side where Dan Humphrey trod carefully and stared at his shoes. He and his sister were nothing alike, one dark and one fair, though each were a careful blend of sweet and sour and self-care, self-love. Serena found nothing to sate her appetite for fascination in Jenny, however, and a writer, an outsider, a pawn in the game was more than she needed. It did help that he was handsome, with strong broad shapes in his face and a firm brown gaze that reminded her a little of Blair's – only Blair at her most yielding and least firm.

"Miss van der Woodsen, I fear I owe you an apology."

"There is nothing to fear from admitting you were wrong. And that you're a liar."

"Beg pardon?"

"Dan," she pronounced, with a great sense of daring. "You want to apologise for misjudging Blair, and you're beginning to doubt the task your sister set you. She probably put it to you as a case of entertainment, yes? And then you realised that Blair was in no way bored and didn't wish to flirt with you, leading to the conclusion that you were supposed to be keeping her away from someone. Or could it be that you already knew your brother-in-law loved her and became intrigued, then had a change of heart."

"The latter, I believe."

"A writer must always be sure of his intention. What changed your mind?"

"Serena," he tried, and was rewarded with a smile. "Your friend's heart is quite impervious and, as you've stated, not mine to take."

"She gives. He doesn't take."

"She doesn't give easily."

"Your sister has a ring on her finger and a legally binding contract."

Dan choked back a laugh. "You do nothing but defend your friend and implicitly insult my sister, and yet you do so with no venom and no fear of reprisals. You have a very sweet temper, Miss van der Woodsen."

"Back to Miss van der Woodsen, is it?" Her smile slanted, liberally spiced with mischief. "For all my disdain for all your family and hatred of social climbers, I thought us friends now."

"Might we shake on it?"

She took his hand before he could even reach for hers, a woman before her time, and pressed it warmly between both of her own. It wasn't the experience his books promised, shooting stars and eclipses and full moons coinciding, but there was a stealing sense of peace. Serena was warm where her skin touched Dan Humphrey's, anchored in place, as if her skirt had been weighted down suddenly. She'd no desire to draw back either way. He was a very restful person, she decided, which would account for the absence of any need to fight over his books or perception of those whom she loved – for maybe an hour or so.

They both stumbled as, with a grind and a screech, the train slowed and finally halted. Serena teetered on her high heels, bit her lip as Dan tugged gently and steadied her.

"Thank you, Mr Humphrey."

"Back to Mr Humphrey, is it?"

She did pull away then, biting harder still to flush her lips as bright as her cheeks and claim heat and overexertion over amusement. Their personal effects had all been carried out of the compartment and it now stood empty, or so thought Serena. Something caught the toe of her right shoe, and she stooped to retrieve it from beneath a ruffle of hem. It was a book, exquisitely tooled and abandoned. She held it out.

"Is this yours?"

There were three deep furrows etched into Dan's brow, parallel but unsteady. "No," he replied, turning it over once it had dropped from her fair palm to his. "This is Austen, it's not mine. Does it not belong to you?"

"No. It could be…but who would put it beneath Blair's seat?"

"Could the dog have pulled it down?"

Outside, beads of sweat smaller than seed pearls were popping along Blair's forehead as she shifted from foot to foot, trying in vain to acclimatise to Florida's humidity in a matter of minutes. Undoing the first button of her bodice would be too improper for words, but there was a valley of moisture between her tightly laced breasts and she longed to wash, change, put herself to rights and get to worshipping the sun properly. Instead, there she was, in a station filled with people who were browner than berries and who gawped at her and her party as if they were some exotic attraction.

"There you are!" She exclaimed when Serena came into view, followed by a porter and, bizarrely, by her hostess' brother. "You weren't there when they came for our things, I was worried that he'd taken you on some wild goose chase around the entire…what is that?"

"It's yours," Serena said flatly, thrusting it towards her.

"It's –"

"B, read the first page."

_To you, on the occasion of your second anniversary.  
>'It is an infantile superstition of the human spirit that virginity would be thought a virtue and not the barrier that separates ignorance from knowledge.'<br>– Voltaire._

"He wrote this a long time ago."

"Now turn over."

_To you: the, it, all. Even now.  
>'<em>_Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,_  
><em>Haply I think on thee, and then my state,<em>  
><em>Like to the lark at break of day arising<em>  
><em>From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;<em>  
><em>For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings<em>  
><em>That then I scorn to change my state with kings.'<br>– William Shakespeare._

He was a few feet away over her left shoulder, close enough to note the soft manner in which she was shocked, revealing no emotion but to him with the slope of her shoulders. She was silent in her study of him, of him as a heathen icon, a traitor to decency. Yet Chuck hadn't sinned enough for one day; he placed two fingers to his lips, inoffensive and inconspicuous, and then flipped his hand so the half-kiss was pointing in her direction. Naturally, Blair refused to accept it, and Chuck turned away and drew on his gloves.

She had the oddest sense that that kiss was still trapped inside –

Waiting for her.

"He scorns to change his state with kings," she murmured, then closed the book on her finger.

That thought, that feeling, that promise could be trapped in there too –

Kept safe for later.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and have a wonderful Kwanzaa!<br>Thanks to:**_** Eternally Romantic, xoxogg4lifexoxo, Breakfastinwonerland, Laura, SaturnineSunshine, flipped, blair4eva, notoutforawalk, Rf, abelard, BellaB2010, lulubelle2010, Maudie, teddy bear, fiona249, Stella, L, thepluot, dreamgurl, girlinthisworld, SassySuzy84, thegoodgossipgirl, Avschick33, MegamiTenchi, Okey-Dokey _and_ Nikki999.**


	9. New Horizons

**8. New Horizons**

Serena had never thought to share a bed, especially if such a thing took place in Florida. Even sleeping alone, her skin gave rise to small pearls of perspiration and her hair hung heavy from her head. It was unseasonably warm, balmy air stirring the white curtains hanging before the balcony door. Blair had flung open those doors the night before and stared through the gauzy fabric, seeming to stretch out with her eyes for the ocean. They'd dared to order the kind of whisky Asher drank from the bar downstairs, which had been delivered in time for bed – so they slept too long, through the morning and into the afternoon. The light was a block of bright yellow when Serena awoke, famished, and tossed a slipper in the direction of Blair's bed. The lump beneath the covers stirred and let out a catlike hiss.

"Stir your lazy bones, B."

"No."

"The others will be expecting us."

"They won't."

"I'm hungry."

"I'm not."

"B!" The left slipper followed its pair, and a roil of dark curls emerged from beneath the crisp sheets.

"Serena." Blair's eyelids were puffy, pouter pigeon foot pink. She hadn't been crying, her friend was sure, she would've heard at such close quarters. "I'm exhausted, and this climate doesn't suit me. What I really want is to sleep until dinner, then wash and change into something pretty. Why don't you go down and play nice with the family? Oh, and deliver this, please." Her hand emerged, a folded scrap of paper trapped between two fingers; Serena turned it over as she took it.

"'For the attention of Mr D. Humphrey'?"

"Ask not, lest ye be asked."

"Lest I be asked what?"

"What you were doing on the train with him for so very long. Why you agreed to walk with him in the first place. It can't have taken so much time simply to retrieve my book and your own belongings, one ladies' bag and one dratted notebook."

"Blair, I…" She wasn't positive as to how to finish the sentence. "And you haven't spoken with Chuck about your book."

"Go down," Blair bade her irritably, then rolled over on her side to gaze out into the twin blues: blue sky, blue sea. Her deep affection for New York, for the grey city with its almost startling patches of green and bright colours in the ballroom, seemed silly compared to the marvelousness of the coast. Tired though she was, though she had been, the taste of salt on her lips as they drew up before the hotel the night before had electrified her in a way that summers in Newport never had. Palm Beach smelt of adventure to Blair, whose life lately had been rich in tragedy and so much dramatic irony that, sometimes, it was as if she were the beleaguered leading lady of a poorly spun operetta. Her headache was genuine this time, however, since she hadn't slept – or she had, but her dreams were too deep and her rest too shallow to count. Those dreams had been electrifying too, but in the wrong way, since they themselves were so very wrong. She hated to dream of Chuck, and she blamed the heat.

The heat above her.

Around her.

The stickiness between her shoulder blades, thighs, anywhere flesh could lie beside flesh.

But she supposed it wasn't Florida's fault that she associated humidity and closeness with fornication, the word she would now use instead of making love. What a silly phrase that was, since Blair assumed that love was assumed pre-consummation. It had been professed over and again in her case, and now again in the words below the words of Voltaire. She had decided to take the high moral ground, since that quote was apparently how he'd chosen to apologise for toying with her in the morning: she would stop Dan Humphrey dead in his tracks, and point him in a more appropriate direction. Chuck wouldn't suffer, nor be jealous of some imagined romance. He would grow tired of chasing her.

Chuck would no doubt disagree.

Chuck did disagree, but his conclusions were similar.

He was half-lying across the bar as the other gentlemen were, louche and lazy and indolently rich. They were all dressed similarly, in shades of fawn and ivory. Chuck stood out in his pure white suit, its piping black to match his cravat. The scotch in his glass was receding rather slowly, since he was required to make calls on several business associates and the gossips whose company Jenny would keep for the vacation's duration. He wanted to be sober for his investors later on, but he wanted to be sober now to answer a difficult question –

Should he let Blair go?

The very notion was painful, a tugging on the cord that bound them like sail and mast with each piece was made useless by the loss of the other. But Blair, he knew, would do very well without him. She was unhappy with the current state of affairs, as a bone of contention between him and Jenny. She didn't want his protection and, he was certain, wished to be married herself. Every young woman over fourteen did, in his experience. Again, there was a jolt of almost tangible pain at the thought of her in white, not in white as he was but with snowy layers of lace wrapped around what was still considered the most sought after virtue in Manhattan. She'd be frosty no more. She'd be soft and sweet in someone else's arms.

Soft and sweet and _happy_.

Happy, above all else.

It would pull the barb from his chest and most likely tear his heart out with it, if he were to indulge in the style of dramatics Jenny so favoured. But she would be happy, she whom he'd declared _the_,_ it_,_ all_, even now. That might yet leave a portion of heart to live with. Nobility was what she deserved of him, and nobility would be to live on that small portion of heart without complaint, without holding the very grudge that had brought him back to New York in the first place.

_Los Angeles, California  
>1899<em>

_Chuck had no problem with the Spanish, especially half-blooded Hispanic girls with the toasted sugar skin and black hair of their mothers and blue or grey or green gazes of their American fathers. Best of all, they knew how to enjoy themselves._

"_Cómo estás, Señor?_" _The girl was lying across him, her hair slithering through his limp fingers._

"_Cómo está,_" _he corrected – she was a whore, after all, he didn't owe her the courtesy of addressing him informally. _"_You're good. And I'm done. Your money is on the table._"

_His assumption was she only spoke rudimentary English, understanding 'good', 'money', 'customer' but no more than that. His other assumption, the arrogant, American assumption, was that her inability to speak the language would make her blind to him, would mean she didn't observe him as any other women would and could see no flaws, no shortcomings, no sadness, no joy. He enjoyed the anonymity._

_As she rose, however, the girl spoke. Her grey eyes were large and pretty. _"_I hope you find peace in your heart, Señor._"

"_Peace?_" _Chuck repeated, thinking he must have misunderstood._ "_Paz_?"

"_De acuerdo_," _she agreed._ "_It is not my place to tell you so, but you are not a man who needs a woman because you are a man who needs a woman. You need some woman, some special woman – she was your lover, yes? Or you wish to be her lover? You wish for her love?_"

"_How do you –_"

"_Men sigh when they have love, Señor, when they have love with me or the other girls. You sigh after love, as if you are saying, 'yes, my body is at peace, I have stopped needing the need of a man, but my soul is heavy'. You are heavy with dreams of the woman you love, and you will never sigh when you have love unless is is with her or unless you learn to love her no more._"_ She grinned, her teeth dazzlingly white. _"_She will not be as free as me, she will not know much. But you will look back and think, 'no whore was ever as good as love con la mujer que amo._"

_He translated aloud. _"_As love with the woman I love._"

"_Yes._"

_Chuck kept her with him no longer, yet found himself counting out bill after bill to add to the few paltry notes ready on the table. He continued counting long after the girl had left with triple her fee and more besides, and when he ran out of money he pulled up a floorboard and began to count all he had there. Another floorboard. Another. Beneath the mattress. Lining the dresser drawers. In the safe. In time, he was surrounded by green, the final notes drifting to the floor and settling like the final clotting of blood. He loved no woman. He loved no man, no partner so much as the thousands of dollars that surrounded him, the hundreds of thousands more in his dozen or so accounts. There was no woman he loved, but there was a woman. It was said that she was the most charitable creature in the city, but her charity had never extended to him. Her lust, perhaps. Her pride. Her grief, at times. But to Chuck Bass, she'd been as tight-fisted with her trust and love as a miser._

_How much, he wondered, was enough to bring her down. He didn't waste a second reflecting upon having love with her, only learning not to love her._

_How much would it take, he wondered, to screw Blair Waldorf as hard as she'd screwed him. As hard, and for as long. She'd made him dance, he wanted her to dance. He wanted her to shrink back from kisses she couldn't evade. He wanted her to do everything in her power to save her beautiful face from society's censure._

Dan Humphrey resembled her a little, more than he did his sister. In his mind, Chuck granted her the liberty to kiss whomsoever she pleased – just not him. She could kiss anyone but him.

_**~#~**_

"Sir Peverell –"

"Sir Hugo. It would be sir if I were a lord, dear Lady, but unfortunately I am a mere knight."

"We haven't so much as a baronet in New York, there's nothing unfortunate about it." Jenny slanted a glance towards Ivy, who nervously stepped forward so the exquisitely painted parasol in her hand shaded Serena and her hostess better. They two were seated on the terrace with the maid behind them, drinking lemonade and being introduced to the great and good of Palm Beach. Jenny was, naturally, thrilled by the attention and the compliments which were lavished upon her; Serena thought the people quite as false as in New York, only browner. Tans would never be fashionable as long as she lived and breathed.

"And we have no one so celebrated as you in Palm Beach," twittered Mrs Smelt, a young divorcée whose disreputable company Jenny was patronising. "Shall we meet your illustrious husband soon, Mrs Bass?"

"He holds himself above," was her abstruse answer. "But there's no doubt in my mind that he'd be delighted to make your acquaintance, Mrs Smelt, and yours too, Sir Hugo."

Sir Hugo Peverell was an English gentleman with the fair countenance of that country, from his complexion to his expertly trimmed moustache to his near transparent eyelashes. All that pallor prompted Serena to uncharitably dub him 'the Peeled Shrimp', and she resolved to tell Blair later. Blair laughing would be something, not only with her mouth but with her whole body. Serena longed to make her dear friend shake with laughter again, the kind of laughter which would bend her double and rack her with uncontrollable giggles. That was her goal for this vacation – that and to vex Jenny in any way she could.

"I'm convinced Mr Bass would be beside himself in his fervour to meet Mrs Smelt," she interjected.

Jenny's response had a snap to it, as if she knew what was coming. "Why?"

"You know Chuck loves a good divorce," Serena said archly, then smiled brightly at the newcomers as if her words were nothing more than an errant comment. Sir Hugo and Mrs Smelt smiled nervously back, and Ivy smothered a snicker while Jenny downed lemonade. She could never truly understand Serena, who could be so placid and then so vibrant and then suddenly, out of nowhere, on the offensive. Maybe she had that sharp streak in her nature, or maybe it was her way of being a good friend, or maybe she was merely Blair's puppet, Jenny didn't know. What she did know was that Serena hadn't trusted her even when she was a maid, had smelled her out as a traitor. She'd never liked Jenny hovering in doorways, taking her coat, bringing her tea. She'd liked Blair disguising herself even less, and dressing Jenny in yellow to seduce Chuck. Speaking of…

"Serena."

"Mrs Bass."

"Jenny, please."

"Mrs Bass."

This was ignored. "Would you happen to know if Blair had a particular ring she favoured?"

"Of course, her ruby."

"Not that. I heard a ring was made from the same stone as that white gold bracelet of hers I once wore, a diamond solitaire. I was informed that Blair had it, and that its worth was one thousand dollars at the time of purchase. Would you know if that were true?"

Serena's face was a blank page, and just as white. "I've never heard of such a ring."

"Chuck has," Jenny tried.

And then it was no longer a blank page, but threatening thunder between the lovely Miss van der Woodsen's brows. "'She has your ring', or so you announced on the train as if you might beat him about the head with it." The knight and the divorcee politely pivoted to face the other direction, but kept their ears open. Serena realised this and lowered her voice to a modicum above silence. "You may ask Blair yourself what jewellery she has and who gave it to her, but my advice is not to bandy such things about in public if you want anyone to go along with the ridiculous premise that your husband loves you and chose you of his own free will."

"Blair's man until death, aren't you?"

"Shall I alter that statement to reflect your husband," challenged Serena. "Or shall we play croquet?"

"If you take that tone with me, I'll –"

"I wouldn't so much as consider trying to blackmail me, Jenny Humphrey. Blair and Chuck may be too star-crossed to conspire together to take you down, but threaten to reveal Blair's secret over my actions and I'll knock you down in the dirt where you belong, and I'll do it with my own hands." Her smile returned, as dazzling as daylight. "Now: croquet?"

Jenny glowered.

Ivy held the parasol a little higher and smirked.

The croquet game was never-ending, lasting through lunch beneath the burning sun. The heat was like hellfire on the avenue where Blair was strolling, her walking dress simple cream with tiny pearl buttons. Dorota had attached invisible padding beneath the arms and in the bodice, but even so the sensation of being too warm and too sticky was pervasive and uncomfortable. Blair held a dainty lace parasol in her right hand, but the gentleman who walked beside her was bare headed, the yellow light gilding his black hair a dusty brown.

"Your note was rather vague."

"I couldn't risk Serena reading it and foiling my plot."

"Then this must be about her."

"About her. And you. About her, you and I."

Dan appeared mildly surprised. He was dressed in beige, with a white shirt underneath. "If this is about the dining car, you know that I –"

"I know that you talked about it with Serena, you misjudged me, yes, yes, yes, it's all very tiresome and I'm getting bored of reading while she moons after me like a swain because she's worried I'm pining to death. I want to give her a gift."

"A gift?"

"A gift," Blair articulated. "Do attend."

"What kind of a gift?"

"I believe I'll dabble in the flesh trade."

"Slavery is illegal."

"Oh no, not slaves." She beamed at him, innocent as a babe in arms. "I'm going to give her you."

Dan nearly choked on the moist air. "Me?"

"The cornerstone of attraction is there, you share a taste for adventure and a disregard for high society – she's forced to live in it, you outside it – and you will come to care for each other as you've never cared for anyone before. I can read my friend with as much ease as people can read and rightly sneer at your novels. You'd be good for her, and you only have to imagine the children to know that it makes genetic sense."

"You're educated about genetics."

"I read," Blair reminded him sourly. "And the Bible is not my preferred material. Science suits me better."

"And how exactly do you plan to give her me?"

His companion was silent as they passed beneath a row of palm trees, some arching over the path and some standing tall and cruel, offering no relief from the sun to those beneath. Blair's hair was less tightly pulled back today, a small braid running from each temple and enwrapping a loose bun at the nape of her neck. She fiddled with the white gold bracelet at her wrist, then abruptly stopped and looked directly up at Dan.

"I don't love you," she told him. "And you don't love me. We'll never love one another – you weren't born for me, for someone like me, only to immortalise someone like me in fiction. I'm an arrogant creature and so are you, but I know I'm arrogant and judgemental, and you'll never properly comprehend that about yourself. Pursuing me is uninteresting to you, and continuing with the pretence is likely to bring down the wrath of the Almighty upon you."

"You mean Chuck."

"I mean the Almighty."

"Yes, Ma'am."

"So go after her," Blair instructed, in a far gentler tone to the one in which she'd reprimanded him. "With my blessing. With my _insistence_. Go and take her mind off me and show her your funny lonely writer boy world, and see how quickly you begin to dream of Serena Celia van der Woodsen. Who gives a damn about whether or not your sister approves."

They walked on a short way as he absorbed all this, past a freshly painted hotel with blue shutters on one floor and lemon coloured ones on the next. Could he…but no. Should he? Though she'd insisted upon it…and what about Serena? Did she, could she ever…did she now?

"My mother would say you had a heart of flowers, Miss Waldorf." He was a little too in awe of her at that moment to use her Christian name.

"How kind of you to say so."

"It's not a compliment."

"No?"

Dan slowed his pace and Blair, shielded from both the sun and his view, paused in mid-step. What he could make out of her beneath the lace brim was a latticework of brightness and shadows, her look shining dark in the deepest shade of all. "No," he affirmed. "A heart of flowers is a heart filled with poetry, with beauty but also with thorns. I think a man would bleed to death attempting to traverse your heart; he would spill his life instead of spilling your secrets."

"Of one thing you can be sure," replied she. "You can be confident that you'll never be my soul's confidante, but in lieu of that…be an ally to me."

"Is an ally a friend?"

"You're not my friend, Daniel Humphrey."

"But you'd like me to be."

"I don't beg for friendship from the likes of you."

"So we are friends."

"Do be quiet, Humphrey, else you'll never woo anyone. Ever."

She was right, undoubtedly right, but Dan couldn't shake the feeling he was letting his family down somehow. Yes, his family was only Jenny, who'd changed so much that he barely recognised his skeletal sister with her expertly applied war paint, an absent mother and a father back in Brooklyn. Jenny had been his reason for coming to the city and coming here, however, had bought him his fine new clothes and paid what was owing to the printers. It was that which prompted him to bend his head and, in a move that astounded Dan himself, kiss Blair full on the mouth. He was right about the heart of flowers, of course: she was as soft, delicate and unyielding as a frozen petal.

Blair gripped his lapels, more to lever him away from her than to draw him close. She blinked.

"I had to check there wasn't some slowly smouldering spark between us."

"You already know there isn't."

"I needed empirical evidence."

"You focus too much on the mechanics of the kiss," was her conclusion. "Which leads me to assume you've never loved anyone enough to allow yourself to be taught how to do it properly. Your first love should've done that. Your first everything should be with someone you love, be it first kiss or first marriage."

Dan laughed. "Then what guidance do you have for me?"

"Fall in love," Blair stated, as if that were cripplingly obvious. "If you're all tangled up in your heart and your emotions when you kiss, everything else will move naturally. It's a dance, Humphrey, she gives, you give, she pushes, you push. Gentlemen follow a lady unless they have absolute assurance she'd enjoy them taking the lead."

"Strange kind of dance."

"If Serena trod on your toe, would you step back to accommodate her even if it would seem you were the one to have made a misstep?"

"That's only polite."

"Then kiss politely until she tires of it."

"What makes you so very certain that she will tire of it?"

Her eyes rolled to Heaven. "I'm granting you, a complete outsider, the great honour of helping to produce my godsons and daughters. Do you honestly believe that any woman would waste the best years of her life being kissed politely, being taken and got with child politely?" Blair snorted. "You're more like one of us than I previously believed. A cold society marriage would suit you down to the ground."

Aggravated by the way she spoke to him, by the way she'd ceased to be amiable in his dealings with Serena and become dictatorial, Dan sniped, "Not every woman disdains politeness, you know, and you wouldn't be in this mess if you hadn't."

"Meaning?"

"Politeness is not being seduced by a young woman of higher status and fleeing when she rejects you. Politeness is not sulking for two years and stockpiling against her. Politeness is definitely not that young woman's head being turned again, first by manipulation and then by passion. You hold your head high as if you desire nothing and no one, but you're so much more of a slave to passion than anyone else. I saw him send you a kiss in the train station, another apology you refused to accept; and yet you trembled, because you do know what an impolite kiss is like, and neither he nor my sister would have any power over you if you didn't."

Blair twirled her parasol, scattering spots of latticed light across her nose. "You're a writer, Daniel Humphrey," she stated with remarkable coolness.

"Yes."

"Which is the life better lived, then, in your _expert_ opinion? I've fallen from grace but learned from that mistake, so I'll never fall again. Your sister, on the other hand, ascends another step with every sycophant who calls out her name as she passes." Her deep brown gaze was full of something that might've been pity. "She has so much farther to fall than I."

"You'd lose your reputation."

"I lost my love, that's enough." Dust rose beneath her heels as Blair picked up a smart pace. "That's more than enough," she murmured as she left Dan standing at the end of the tree line, his expression as contrite as could be. "'Tis better to never have loved at all than to have loved and lost."

The hotel dinner gong sounded in the distance.

* * *

><p><strong><em>I've had so many alerts and favourites over the past few weeks, thank you - but I'd really love to hear from you! If you don't fancy leaving a review, come say hi on my Tumblr or Formspring? I appreciate all of you, truly, silent or loud. Thanks to<em>_:_ Eternally Romantic, Kate2008, , L, notoutforawalk, MegamiTenchi, Nikki999, bfan, lulubelle2010, Stella296, Laura, CBFanForever, SaturnineSunshine, teddy bear, Maribells, abelard, flipped, Kaya, That Pam _and_ fanny0997.**


	10. Giselle

**9. Giselle**

"Fresh flowers, ma'am?"

The scent of the blossoms was rich enough to be imagined as gold dust in the air, though the petals themselves were white, stitched through with veins of pale green.

"It's too early for fresh flowers. These must have been grown in a hothouse."

"Forgive me for contradicting you, ma'am, but no." The bellboy smiled a dazzlingly bright smile, as if he used peroxide on his teeth in addition to his floppy blonde hair. "These come up early, and the manager's wife requested they be sent up to all the ladies of your party. Mrs Bass said she preferred diamonds to posies, so I brought them straight down for a Miss van der Woodsen and a Miss Waldorf."

"Miss van der Woodsen is ready," Blair replied, as Serena smiled regretfully from her seat at the vanity, a pink fabric rose already peeking out from behind one ear. "But I'd be pleased to take them off your hands." She pressed a dollar into the boy's palm, and his eyes lit up.

"No charge, ma'am."

"That's for you."

He was grinning from ear to ear as he took his cart away, and their maid closed the door behind him. Serena, who was now lightly dusting her nose with powder, remarked, "You're so much kinder to subordinates nowadays. Are you afraid that they'll rise up and usurp you? I shan't marry him and leave you, if that's what you're worried about."

"Shush." Blair nudged her off the stool and assumed her place, causing a cloud of powder to rise into the air and Serena to shriek. Ivy sprung to her side, helped her up and promptly removed the flowers from Blair's hand, setting to winding strands of dark hair around her fingers and working the blooms into her coiffure. "I can be kind if I so wish," she said archly. "And I love fresh flowers. Oh, S, Mr Humphrey offered to escort you down to dinner tonight, so be sure to go down before me. That way, you won't be outshone."

"Full of ourselves tonight, aren't we?"

"Perhaps."

Serena sighed. "B, you look gorgeous."

Everything about Blair was white, from the pearls at her throat to the layers of crepe de Chine over the spotless silk of her gown. She glowed quietly, a gem within the oyster of the dim room, content that her best laid plans were soon to fall into place and all would be well. With a slight wince as Ivy tugged on a recalcitrant curl, Blair drew on her gloves, paused, then added her heart shaped ruby to the appropriate finger. It wouldn't do to be seen without it, not tonight, not when she was trying so very hard to exude all the rectitude and purity of a Vestal Virgin. Rubies were the jewel of a virtuous woman, and of virtuous love. As much as she was loathed to admit it, Dan had been right: if only she'd been a little more prudent with whom and how she kissed, none of the persons there present would have power over her. Holding back and fortitude had always been Blair's talents, and letting them slip for the sake of a thing so variable as her heart was a mistake she wouldn't make again – not in Palm Beach, and certainly not back in Manhattan.

"Where did you get that dress?"

"It's my cotillion gown, Asher had Mr Carroll make it over. Speaking of which, we've been here a day and we haven't so much as looked up a good dressmaker. The hem on your green is drooping, I noticed when you last wore it."

"Why should Asher worry about your cotillion gown?"

"Ask him. I assume he was there, all the young gentlemen of his age were. Maybe he covets it, though I've told him time and again that a skirt will never suit him." She smiled, but Serena was frowning.

_Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York  
>1896<em>

"_Charles Bass is here._"

_Serena adjusted her diamond earrings. _"_Why should we care? He's a swine._"

"_I hear he has a bet running with Carter Baizen to see who can make a woman out of an only recently out lady before the clock strikes twelve._"

"_I am a woman_," _Blair announced grandly, accepting a pin from the on duty maid to separate her carefully blacked lashes._ "_And he has as much chance with me as that inbred cousin of yours, Iz._"

_Serena giggled._ "_Lord, he does hang on you, B._"

"_There shall be no more 'hanging on us' after tonight, ladies._" _Kati Farkas, who'd just emerged from the resolution of an awkward incident involving her new stays, hooked her arms through Iz's and Serena's, who immediately latched onto Blair._ "_We must be as aloof as angels if we hope to find respectable matches after what half of those gentlemen know about us._"

"_What half of those gentlemen know about your Parisian tricks ensures you a good marriage,_"_ Serena teased._

"_What half of those gentlemen know about your kisses –_"

"_What half of those gentlemen know about your stockings –_"

"_What all those gentlemen know,_" _interjected Iz._ "_Is that our dear Blair is untouchable, and that they'll have to raise the sky like Atlas himself before Papa Harold gives his Blair-Bear up. You don't even play with us._"_ She kissed her friend lingeringly on the cheek. _"_And even the Bible allows that._"

"_Off me, Sappho!_" _Blair laughed as she thrust the other girl away. _"_And come. We must present a united front against this great evil that is the Bass-Baizen Bet._"

_They swept back into the ballroom proper, resuming escorts and family members. Serena was swung around by a Wetmore who'd already had too much champagne, while Kati and Iz resumed the Whittaker boys as if they'd never been away. Blair's companion, a cousin whom her mother had chosen, was outside, voiding his stomach onto the pavement. Mama would have him conveniently removed, leaving her fair game for any young man who wanted to try his luck with the Waldorf heiress. Blair fizzed with excitement, fiddled with the new bracelet on her wrist and smiled at her father, her benefactor, who'd delivered the velvet box and its divine contents that morning with nary a word, only a beam as wide as her mother's frown was deep._

"_There's something wrong with that level of perfection,_"_ was Chuck Bass' comment. _"_It needs to be violated._"

"_Serena van der Woodsen_,_"_ _Carter Baizen guessed, with a curl to the pronouncement like a lick._

"_Dressing them all in gauzy white and parading them before us…it's like they're begging us to do it._"

"_Not Serena?_"

_Chuck shook his head. _"_My taste is not for Amazons, what you see there is what you get. Seek out the petite hiding behind such a girl. Find the hidden fire that always comes from being outshone. Waldorf would have a rage in her if her beloved S ever decided to try for her place as queen._"_ His gaze loitered too long on Blair's bare shoulders. _"_Your opinion?_"

"_Why crack a nut when fruit only requires plucking?_"

"_Meaning?_"

"_Why waste your time when you could be fucking?_"

_Both men considered this for a moment._

"_Is Waldorf your challenge for the evening, then?_"

"_One doesn't drain such a fine vintage in one swallow, Baizen. It's to be savoured, and in order to be savoured it must be teased, and then tortured, and I don't have time to torture tonight. I'll take the Astor triplets. All three._"

"_I want Serena,_" _said Carter stubbornly._

_It was impossible to for Chuck to restrain his smirk. With one last glance towards Blair, he shook his head._ "_Then watch out for her guard dog's teeth._"

_They moved to one side as the man behind them stepped forward to intercept Gemma Astor, who let out a shriek of delight. Asher, tucking her unfashionably freckled hand into the crook of his elbow, smiled wryly and pretended not to hear Chuck's snarl. He did so love sabotaging a handsome gentleman in a suit far handsomer than his own._

Just as the Bass railroad car had a communal compartment for when affluence wasn't fashionable, the hotel had constructed its dining area and dance floor outside, a wooden shelter arching over the patrons with several columns making up the sides with nothing more elegant involved. Dinner would still be sumptuous, of course, the silverware hallmarked and gleaming, the musicians the best in the state. The tinge of the rustic such base settings added to the proceedings could only ever be considered 'charming' to ladies and gentlemen of taste.

The evening air was blue, thickly scented and filled with the bellowings and chimings of insects. The Bass party stood on the hotel's top step, in a place where the balcony of one floor above protruded and formed a blank white roof over their heads like a slab of cloud. Chuck had decided to ignore the edicts of his wife as they'd dressed and had chosen the more informal tuxedo, though Dan was in white tie and all that entailed. He rubbed his rough chin – the beard was not coming in well – and lit a cigarette. Almost instantaneously, Sir Hugo Peverell, who'd been invited to dinner for some reason Chuck could not fathom, pulled out his pipe from his pocket and began to puff in unison. Jenny had run out of dyed cigarettes and conceit prevented her from smoking any other kind, so she had a sour expression to match the sour eggplant hue of her dress as they waited for their guests to join them.

"I haven't had the pleasure," announced the English gentleman. "Of your second friend's company. Her name is?"

"Blair," Dan supplied. "Blair Waldorf."

"Perhaps you should escort her down to dinner, then," was Chuck's suggestion, though he appeared fixated by the swaying of the palm trees and remained as immobile and disinterested as ever.

"No." Jenny took the arm of her new toy before her husband had even finished speaking. "As befits such a noble guest, Sir Hugo will be escorting me down to dinner."

"Sir Hugo," Serena greeted as she emerged, a personification of cool water in silver blue, her low neckline edged with tiny pink rosebuds to match the bloom in her hair. Only a day in the sun had turned her the toasted sugar colour Chuck would always associate with seemingly telepathic Spanish girls; Dan couldn't take his eyes from her. "You should go down with Mrs Bass now, and the four of us will follow after."

"So we shall."

And away they went, the lord and the ladies' maid, as proud as hidalgos.

It was at this point that Serena hesitated. She had thus far kept her gaze firmly away from Dan in direct contradiction of Blair's commands, but she had to face him now. His smile was more than winsome, and she felt that same rush of warmth, security that had overcome her on the train. Dan's smile gave the sense of standing with one's back to a fire after a wet or snowy day outside, the way first the clothes began to steam, and then the skin. These reflections had frozen her to the spot, so Blair gave her a helpful push in the small of the back.

Dan caught and steadied her. "I thought your balance might be better now we're off the train."

"Yes," added Serena's helpful friend, receiving a black scowl from the blonde beauty for her trouble. "You really must stop falling into Mr Humphrey's arms, S. And now, by a happy coincidence, you're both nicely arranged to go down to dinner."

"So we are."

Blair had never liked consequence, and therefore her preference tended to be not to think about them until they were directly on top of her. Admittedly, this Sir Hugo had been a twist in the many threads she was pulling, since she'd expected the Basses to be together, but at least Serena was with Dan and would only hate her for a moment or two. She now had her own predicament to contend with, the one she hadn't anticipated, the one Jenny could only approve of as it so well demonstrated how estranged she and Chuck were. Even now she stood still, staring at his back beneath the black dinner jacket, waiting for him to speak rather than risking it herself.

Chuck blew out his last lungful of smoke and flicked the butt away. "It seems I have the honour of escorting you to dinner."

"I thought I'd go down alone."

"Ah, yes. Humphrey and Serena, Jenny and I…you do like your matched pairs. And yet last I checked, it was improper for a woman to go to dinner alone."

"Last I checked," she snapped. "Unshaven men were improper at dinner."

"Name me a great philosopher who was clean shaven."

"Mill."

"I assume you also admire him for his work on the subjection of women, not solely for his famed ability to use a razor."

"I admire utilitarianism."

"You would, wouldn't you." His tone was not bitter, but sad. It sounded grey, if a voice could ever sound so. "The greatest happiness for the greatest number, with the needs of the minority ignored. That's what you're trying to do now, with your matched pairs."

"You should emulate me."

"But I am." He turned to her, a shock of black and white, not even warm from the neck up since there was such a want of heat in his expression. He couldn't help but become a statue at times like these, the planes of his face and the rich colour of his eyes hardening in correspondence with a hardening of the heart. It was the only form of self-preservation he knew. "So I'll take you to dinner like the most gracious of hosts, and you'll neither snipe at me nor convince yourself you hate me for dictating to you, nor make this any worse for either or us."

"Is my company so very objectionable to you?" asked Blair, slipping her arm through his and doing her damnedest not to hang on.

"You know it is."

They took the stairs slowly to allow for her insubstantial white slippers, and the time she took to descend each step gave Chuck time to revel in her. He was like a greedy child, as he ever had been, gorging himself on the fragile pallor of her exposed clavicle and the pale gleam of her dress as a whole. He recognised it, and it mocked him. His contemplations of the day had led him to another conclusion: if they'd waited, everything would have been alright. It wasn't specifically waiting to kiss, waiting to write forbidden letters or waiting to make love, more that if he'd been a little older and a little less of a greedy child, they would've been safe. But he always was a greedy child, even now, and nothing could be done about it.

Nothing but release.

"You have to accept this," said she.

"Yes."

They moved like mere acquaintances, less than acquaintances, holding one another at arm's length, connected only by the soft innerness of her elbow pressed against the same place on his jacket. Blair knew you should cut there if you wished to destroy yourself, and her skin burned as if she'd already done so.

"You don't know what it is I want you to accept."

He stared straight ahead, silently isolating each point of pressure on his arm and mapping the slender limb in his mind. His desires were immature, and not at all noble: to unbutton the smooth fabric of her glove, draw it back like the peel of an orange and touch the tender flesh beneath. "I can presume, and my presumption is that you want me to grow up, as you believe you have."

"You and I loved each other, and then you broke my heart."

"No." Their walk was taking longer than it should, for they were lifting and lowering each foot as if they walked upon a field laced with explosives. One misstep could send either up into the air and into a million pieces, falling back to earth like crimson rain and painting the other with their blood. Chuck felt the idea of it pooling in his palms as he steeled himself to speak again, one half of his mind set on its self-sacrificing course and the other protesting that one more moment couldn't hurt, a few more quiet words, taking her into his arms in the dimness beneath the trees where no one could see them.

The night of the ambassador's ball resurfaced, a night complete with a kiss on a mouth still swollen from another man's kisses. He wouldn't let her have her prize, her prince, not then, not when a cold society marriage had been the fate she'd craved and the one he forbade her.

How the wheel had turned, and how his maturity had undone him.

"No," he repeated, halting and meeting her gaze with quite as much agony as if he were scrutinising the sun. "Your heart can't be broken, because you don't have one. You better resemble a candle: perfectly formed, but once the outside has been burned, there is nothing left of you. I have suffered fickle and false love from you, and I won't do so again. To think of you is not pleasurable, your presence here is not to my taste. I married to advantage, I've recently discovered, and all you do is cause my wife grief when she takes it upon herself to be jealous. I release you from any promises you swore, any promises I might've sworn or edicts I laid upon you when I still believed it was something human that kept you standing, not a wick within your wax; I'm letting you go, and that's it. Unless you'd like to tell me you love me again?"

Blair didn't strike him, which Chuck would've welcomed under the circumstances – the blow might've knocked the bitter flavour from his tongue. Her eyes were intent, intense, liquid like a doe's eyes as it runs from the guns. "You're an animal," she swore, dragging her arm back through his. "But you have nothing to fear, for I hold to only the promise that I will never tell you I love you again. I will never love you again. There are gentlemen, you may be surprised to know, begging for your fate. It is therefore to _my_ advantage that my love withered and died the moment you let Jenny Humphrey have her way with you, and its burial suits me very well. As I said, you need not bother yourself to escort me. I think, for the first time, we finally understand each other."

She picked up her skirts, yanking on the delicate tissue, and rushed towards the dining area as if there was no place she'd rather be.

Chuck would rather have been dead. He realised his hands were stinging, and when he raised them in an abstracted sort of way, he saw his nails had cut deep as he'd clenched his fists. He'd been right after all.

There was blood on his hands.

"Try this."

"What is it?"

"You'll like it, I promise."

Serena parted her lips and allowed a small spoonful of whatever was in Dan's bowl to spread across her tongue, coating it in fire. She coughed and reached for her wine glass but the heat quickly subsided, leaving a pleasant spicy flavour she'd never before experienced.

"Is this Cajun? My mother has a book…"

"The best is further south. We must go someday." Dan couldn't tell whether it was his forwardness or the stew that was producing so much sweat across his palms, but he felt both flushed and flush, which was what he supposed was the 'low rent' manner of saying lucky. He felt indescribably lucky when Serena's knee bumped his beneath the table, when she smiled and apologised only to lean close to hear of some particular plot point and for them to collide again. Blair had predicted Serena would soon fill his dreams, and with night still drawing in around them, he almost lusted for the hours when he could be alone and dream of her. Dan was on the point of casting this great gratefulness in Blair's direction when he caught sight of her properly for the first time since they had sat down. She didn't eat, or at least, he didn't see her chew or swallow. Food had been pushed around her plate and left smears which gave the semblance of movement, but the truth was that it was movement from hand to hand, not hand to mouth. Serena was, for once, too absorbed to notice.

He nudged Blair's foot gently beneath the table, and she replied with a near imperceptible shake of the head. Dan glanced towards Chuck, and away just as quickly.

Hellfire.

His brother-in-law looked as if he were sitting ass-first in hellfire, and Dan doubted that, even if actual demons had manifested to torment him with the silverware, he could've appeared more wretched. What was even stranger to behold was the metamorphosis from abject despair to indifference every time Jenny turned towards him, every time anyone did, in fact. Dan couldn't help but be reminded of his Henry, the Henry he'd devised to twist the ladies of New York into knots. Henry's misery had cast him far from his Diana, all the way across the sea, but she'd hunted him down. Their author had a horrible sense that his words had come to life, and that they'd all had a part in transforming this Henry's attempt to remove himself from temptation into a nightmare.

Most of all Blair, who had stood up to dance twice before dinner was even over and who'd been bright and witty and gay only so long as those dances lasted.

"You'll tire yourself out," remarked Jenny cattily when Blair returned from the second.

"I fear I can't help myself," said Blair, in a queer flat voice that finally attracted Serena's attention. She became very still, listening to her friend's tone and analysing inside her own head. "When there are gentlemen who wish to dance with me, why should I refuse them? I thank God that they do want to dance with me; I do so long to make a good match with somebody suitable, somebody well established…" She flicked her eyelashes down and then up again, directing the coquettish gesture at Sir Hugo. "But no one quite like that has asked me tonight."

"And if I were to ask?" He inquired. "Miss Waldorf, would you care to dance the next with me?"

"How gracious, sir." She seemed to hide beneath her lashes this time, suddenly shy. "It would be an honour."

He took her hand, they rose. Violins swelled.

"They make a lovely couple," Jenny proposed with a sigh, piqued to have lost her escort but pleased beyond words that the ceasefire between her husband and her least favourite guest was now over.

"You're a vision," one half of the lovely couple drawled almost directly into the other's ear. Unlike the gentlemen who had gone before, Blair had to force herself to touch this one, for while Sir Hugo at close quarters was jovial and fatuous, Sir Hugo too close was overtly amorous. His hands strayed as he went on, "A fine filly, one might say, for all you're an American."

"Americans have dollars," Blair replied sweetly. "While your family has barely a pound to its name."

To his credit, Sir Hugo didn't flinch. "The ancestral hall is mortgaged to the hilt, it's true, but that's why I'm here. You're right, American girls do have money from the endeavours of their American papas, and lots of it. Do you know the kind of dowry that they throw at a man with a title?" His fingers brushed the base of her spine. "You yourself would do well to see me as a prospect, especially in light of the discussion Mrs Bass and Miss van der Woodsen had in my hearing earlier today."

"What conversation?"

"What will you give me if I tell you?"

Her smile was a picture, teeth bared with savagery in semblance of a grin. "If you don't tell me, I'll scream about precisely where your hands are now, and not in the way gentlemen like to hear ladies scream." She ground her heel into his instep. "So you'll tell me now, Sir Hugo."

"I should have you whipped."

"If only I were a fine filly and not an heiress with more money than you could ever dream of, then you could."

"Fine." The knight pouted, his attractive face now indescribably callow. "The skirt was asked by Mrs Bass if there were a particular ring you favoured, to which she replied the ruby you currently wear. Mrs Bass then said she was referring to a ring whose worth was one thousand dollars, whose stone had been cut from the same as adorns a certain bracelet of yours. Miss van der Woodsen had never heard of it, so Mrs Bass told her, 'Chuck has'. They then continued in an undertone, but the gist of it was that the ring had been given to you by this person, or so thought Mrs Bass. Do you have such a trinket in your collection? And what kind of a name is Chuck?"

He was English, they always used 'Charlie' as the diminutive. He wouldn't make the connection between 'Charles' and 'Chuck'.

Blair began to move in slow motion, turning on the spot while her brain processed the idea of a diamond like the diamond she still had – who had known about the bracelet? Who'd been close enough to her to see her smile as she spoke of her father's gift, one of the many he'd given her? He'd been spoiling her unto the last, struck down so quickly than the Vermeer he'd purchased for her had been given posthumously, and Blair loved it with such fierceness that she would never even allow it to be taken down from her bedroom wall and cleaned.

Serena knew, but would have no cause to buy her jewellery.

Her mother knew, but would've waited for another to give her a solitaire.

Chuck knew.

Chuck knew, and he had been trying to tell her something by letting Jenny know too.

"He was going to propose," she breathed. "That's why."

"What's why? I beg your pardon?"

But Blair didn't answer, only subsided gracefully into Sir Hugo's shoulder. "Don't call my friend a skirt," she bade him. "Not if you still want to be virile by the time this dance is over." He chuckled, surprising himself, but her mind was already elsewhere.

She didn't know if Chuck were trying to be cruel or kind, but she would find out. Let her go, would he?

She'd see about that.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Back at uni now, so let's see how this updating thing goes. Once more, with feeling - I love you all, silent, loud, crouching tiger, hidden dragon etcetera. Thanks to:<strong>_** abelard, Elle, SaturnineSunshine, teddy bear, Eternally Romantic, Curious Blonde, L, girlinthisworld, Nikki999, Okey-Dokey, Breakfastinwonerland, thepluot _and_ Krazy4Spike.**


	11. Read All About It

**10. Read All About It**

_Darling girl,  
>Enclosed is your very first column, guaranteed to keep me, your humble servant, rolling in readers and you, the acid-tongued temptress, amused. I've embellished a little, of course, so we'll see how madam enjoys a taste of her own medicine.<br>Yours in vicarious pleasure,_  
>– <em>A<em>

Blair would've liked to laugh aloud as she read and reread the missive, taking personal pleasure in Asher's undisguised viciousness. Unfortunately, she was sweating profusely and in a great deal of pain, and laughter was quite out of the question. Leather straps encircled her torso at the waist and below the bust line, with another odious binding digging into her forehead. Attached to these three was a steel pole that ran the length of her spine and forced it into a perfect verticality, which was as pleasing as it was painful. She'd been wearing the contraption for two hours or so, and it seemed miraculous to Blair that her teeth hadn't been worn down to stumps from so much grinding against the ache.

"What on earth are you doing, B?"

"Don't you remember Mama's edict? The days when I had to wear this damned thing every single day but Sunday?"

"You hated it then."

"I hate it now."

"Then why are you torturing yourself?"

"It has come to my attention –" She winced as Serena unstrapped the lower rung of the contraption. "That for all her faults, my mother had an excellent plan in mind for me, without which I've been behaving like a child."

Her friend freed her entirely, then gently rubbed the red welt the frame had left on Blair's forehead. "How, exactly?"

"I haven't been thinking rationally." She rose and went directly to the bathroom, turning the tap so a blessedly cool stream of water ran over her hands. Once they were damp, she patted her face where the leather had dug in, then smoothed on some of Serena's travelling cream for good measure. "I was so lost in my own misery that I didn't think logically about why and how that misery had come about; I automatically assumed that it was I who was unlovable, not Jenny, not the nothing who had to use blackmail to even achieve a counterfeit of love. I was dangerously close to behaving in the same manner last night."

Serena leaned close, propping her chin on Blair's shoulder. Their lovely reflections gazed back from the gilt framed mirror above the sink. "You were so sad at dinner, and then so different when Sir Hugo and the others asked you to dance. What happened?"

"Chuck told me I had no heart."

"You can't believe that."

"I don't. And more importantly, neither does he."

"Blair…" The golden head pressed against the dark one, as if pushing their skulls together might push caution and care through the skin.

"Jenny was delving for information about a ring I don't have, but a ring that would mean something to me were it in my possession – the stone was commissioned from the same diamond as my father's bracelet, it would obviously mean the world to me – and who could've told her? The jeweller might've known it was meant for me, but not that I had it. Someone told her." Blair was beautifully flushed, but to Serena her eyes looked too hot. They verged upon fevered. "He told her, knowing it would get back to me, which can't help but invalidate every word he said. He wanted me to know that he'd blown everything he had at the time on a ring for me. He's trying to make amends in the most ridiculous manner. He's trying to manipulate me into hating him in order to set me free."

"You want him back," Serena surmised drily.

"No."

"No?"

"We were and are beyond the reach of any help, unless you can think of some way to do away with Jenny that doesn't involve hog tying and drowning her." Blair slipped from beneath Serena's touch and briskly slapped herself once on each cheek, adding lively spots of colour which only increased the appearance of frenzy. "But he mustn't stop loving me. Chuck ceasing to love me and giving up on loving me changes everything."

"How?"

"It just does."

"Blair…" She was at a loss what to say, pretty, stalwart Serena. "You're still beautiful, you're still young…"

"I'm not." A vase tipped as Blair flung herself down before the vanity, though she caught it before it could do any damage. "I'm not beautiful compared to some sixteen year old skirt with the big innocent gaze and freshness that comes from being fresh off a farm, that which is now considered desirable. If I lose him, I've lost everything. He's part of who I used to be. He's part of who I have to be, if they're to covet me as they used to."

Silent as a guardian angel, Serena leant against the doorframe of the en suite and doubted everything that had so recently left her friend's mouth. Blair was making another mistake, though she didn't know it yet. As much as she claimed to hate him, the reason she needed Chuck to love her was because she needed her own love, her own deeply buried, constantly denied love to be reciprocated. It was nothing to do with the status that came with having a swain, as the world could never know about this suitor's existence. She was right to say he was part of her past, insofar as he was part of her future too. In essence, Blair was correct: Chuck was part of who she used to be.

He was also part of who she was, and couldn't be without him.

"The way he used to."

Blair said this almost beneath her breath as she stroked rouge over her cheeks; Serena wondered if she'd even heard herself speak.

_**~#~**_

"Have you seen this?"

Chuck awoke with a mouthful of newspaper and a pounding head, his collar choking him. He wasn't exactly cognisant of what he'd drunk the night before, only that there'd been a great deal of it and that he'd developed the habit of finding Blair at the bottom of every glass, and filling it up again when he didn't manage to sink her. There she'd be, the fiercely fought tremble of her bottom lip more telling than the words she'd spat at him, the black painted spars of her lashes curling outward like clock springs as she'd refused to blink – as if looking away from him might betray her. His day would be spent in contemplation of this and self-flagellation, but for now there was the pressing matter that his wife had just flung a freshly delivered copy of the New York Standard into his face.

"Naturally I haven't, considering I was imagining myself in Sodom and Gomorrah until you threw it at me." He turned over and was repulsed by the taste of his own tongue. "Do we have any juice?"

Jenny rolled her eyes as the paper flopped onto the floor, snatched it up and began to read aloud. "'Miss B visited the public dining car to commend a soldier or two for his service, and stayed for cards…in the company of Mr DH, and appears to be teaching him city manners, something neither he nor his sister seem to possess'!" She snorted indelicately. "And you'll surely enjoy this: 'no word on how the most famous new money new union is going, but perhaps Mr Bass would have time to comment if he could tear himself away from one particular female guest for even a moment'!"

"I haven't been attached to anyone."

"Liar."

"I made the official decision last night not to attach myself to anybody, not ever." She started as he cast a glance behind him, a wickedly sharp glance like a shard of glass which cut her to the core. "Don't accuse me of having feelings you couldn't begin to comprehend, even if they were yours."

In an instant, Jenny had recovered herself. "Will you shave now?"

"No."

"Will you do anything about this libellous article?"

Chuck sighed. "The majority of it is true, and it only raises your profile to have such publicity. The idea of a spy in our camp is, I admit, somewhat distressing, but all it means is that your manners must be above reproach. Against my better judgement, I've made a sacrifice which will incidentally strengthen our marriage." He writhed, pressed his back against the dressing room couch, squinted at the gilded ceiling, was as incapable as ever of being comfortable in her presence. "You're going to have to give up on your tantrums if you want to keep pace with the martyr I've inexplicably become."

"You did that for me?"

"No." He was too sore to laugh, both inside and out. "Never for you."

There was a moment of silence, and then Jenny lowered her long, skinny body down onto Chuck's. She lay atop him and watched the fire flee his eyes, leaving them iced over and hostile. He took her hands so they couldn't rest on his chest and breastbone and held the upper part of her body away from his, arching her back like a snake as she struggled against him. "Nothing changes," he told her coolly. "You have your caveat, and I have mine."

"You have needs."

"Then give me up and let me go to her."

"You have _needs_," she snarled. "Needs that can be fulfilled by any woman with a pulse and, more importantly, by the woman you're married to!"

"I lay with a woman-child once before," he replied. "But I was a child too, and we were too stupid to admit that we weren't ready for each other. Everything is spoilt when you give yourself up too early and too easily. Jenny," he said softly, using her name for the first time in a long time. "If I were the soul that matched yours, though I sometimes doubt you have one, even then I would wait for you. As it is, you've locked my own God-given soul away from me. Why the _Hell_ –" It was a velvet curse from his scotch scarred tongue. "Would you dare to dream that I want you when you've taken so much from me?"

"We're married," was her stubborn refrain.

"So were Joseph and Mary, and she remained the Blessed Virgin Mother until the end of her days."

"She had a son!"

"You have a wardrobe full of Worth gowns." Chuck drew his legs up, still careful to be gentle as he thrust she and he to opposite ends of the couch. "I believe that's the modern equivalent."

It was then, pushed away and called a child, that Jenny formulated her own resolution: she would no longer be jealous of Chuck and Blair, no matter what occurred; from now on, her mission in life would be to make Chuck as envious and possessive of her as possible. She knew if she tried hard enough, she could get under his skin and rile him up to the point of fury. Then he'd take her to prove she was his, his and no one else's, and she'd be safe and wanted and loved and her wardrobe full of Worth gowns would be as nothing in comparison.

_**~#~**_

Ruffles were being 'done' that season, or so advised the dressmaker whom Serena had sought along the boulevard. While nothing could be run up within the space of a day, two light summer gowns had been altered to reflect the trend, for all it was early in the year and not the fashionable time to vacation. The small pannier frills on Blair's still smaller hips rippled in the breeze coming in off the water, more temperate than the previous day but still enough to necessitate the constant application of a handkerchief soaked in ice water to her brow. Serena was made of hardier stuff, as was Charlie – they were like lizards in the heat, all long limbs and bright smiles. In Blair's favour, however, her best friend had no talent for croquet.

Good.

"All against all, is it?" inquired Blair breezily as she approached a recumbent Jenny, whose sea foam cotton draped frame was itself draped across an outdoor chaise. "I do so hate picking sides."

"All against all," Jenny confirmed, though her lips didn't seem to move as she spoke, and her eyes didn't change in expression. "Dan will join you and Serena, and Chuck when he cares to make an appearance."

She was unaware that Chuck had just emerged from the hotel's great French doors, and was standing behind her as he remarked, "I think the day is too hot for you, Mrs Bass. You'll burn lying out here like an egg on a stove."

"I'll bronze," Jenny snapped. "Like the other ladies of this halcyon state."

"As you wish."

Blair imperceptibly tilted her hat a little further forward, protecting her nose from a possible blight of freckles but decreasing the flow of air to her skin. She was as convinced as ever that beauty was only obtainable through suffering, as her earlier experience with the frame had proved. Her back ached, but it was ramrod straight, and that was what mattered. Keeping her visage lily or virgin rose white was what mattered, not the discomfort she was experiencing from being outside at such a time. She daintily removed her right glove, waved it to and fro in front of her face for a few moments, then slipped it back over her wrist.

"Shall we play?"

It was unsurprising to everyone, even Dan himself, that Daniel Humphrey couldn't play croquet if his life depended upon it. Serena would line up a shot or do her own game damage in order to get him past, and still he would knock the ball and send it spinning in the opposite direction. His sister had even deigned to sit upright so she could laugh at him as he flailed, the jaunty red kerchief around his neck growing darker and darker with sweat. Serena laughed too, but not unkindly, for she herself was not much better, and would've been worse if she' hadn't been born and raised with it. A few feet away and therefore much further on in the game, Blair was doing her damnedest to play dirty. She was quite famous for it in New York, which may have been half the reason no one there ever wanted to play with her. She'd aim her ball through the wicket so it stopped only just on the other side, advancing her game but not allowing the player who followed after to pass their ball directly through the hoop and score too.

That player, of course, was Chuck.

Each took their turn in perfect silence.

"Will you think very badly of me for giving up?" Dan asked with not a little shortness of breath; he'd been forced to chase his ball all over the green and them thwack them back to Serena again, leading to the kind of comedy of errors which ended with the ball beneath her skirt, miles away beyond her or rebounding off her toes.

"If you let me lose too," Serena replied, dropping her own mallet in a most unladylike show and, worse, winking at him. "Blair will prevail eventually, she always does. It's usually because gentlemen change the rules for her as she goes along, but in this case it's more likely to be the all-consuming desire to show off."

"To Chuck?"

"No, to us," was her answer. "Beating Chuck is the demonstrative part."

They took seats behind the imperial tableau that was Jenny Bass, and were handed dewed glasses of pink lemonade by Ivy. Serena took a sip and shivered in delight at the coldness.

"Did you know –" And so began Dan's attempt to be charming. "That pink lemonade was apparently invented by a clown who stole the washing water from a horse rider with red stockings, mixed it with the drink and sold it as strawberry lemonade?"

"I didn't." She held the glass at arm's length. "They don't still make it to the same recipe, do they?"

"Just the same."

Her bright blue gaze found his, downturned and almost bashful. "You're teasing me."

"Yes." He grinned and chimed his glass against hers.

Chuck was suffering for sport as much as Blair was suffering for beauty, or perhaps more. He could smell her perspiration, the earthy scent of exertion that was easy to recognise from times long past and never to be repeated, only reflected upon and adored silently in the darkest hours of the night. She was clearly struggling with the rising temperature, though she never indicated or admitted that this was so. Her maid applied a moist handkerchief at regular intervals, but this could only give so much relief. In spite of himself, he began to fret as her step became heavier, though she was still canny enough to inch her ball past his and through the last hoop but one.

He was forced to go to her side to line up his shot; she wouldn't move from the spot until she'd seen he had taken it cleanly, and was naturally close enough to touch. Chuck didn't touch her – at least, didn't intend to – as he leant forward and felt the neat spar of her hip against his, the frailty of the pelvic bone leading to the slender legs and ankles. Blair didn't speak, but even her exhalations were loud as thunder when they were both concentrating so hard: he on outdoing her at her own game and continuing to stoke her anger against him, and she on not being beaten. If the weather wouldn't beat her, he certainly wouldn't.

A too hard tap on the ball sent it spinning, the angles wrongly calculated. She spoke softly.

"Am I distracting you?"

"Was I not transparent enough with you last night?"

"I understand you well enough. All I want to know is if I'm distracting you from the game."

"No."

"But you putted wrong."

"Yes."

"Because of me?"

"No."

"How queer."

"Not at all."

"I find a gentleman who isn't a natural sportsman to be a queer thing indeed."

"I don't know." Chuck found himself fixated on the mallet in his hands with the extreme interest of one who is avoiding looking at anything else. "We have to first agree that I'm a gentleman, which you in the past have denied, but which seems admissible when you yourself are all they call gentle and yet a gamesman, a cheat."

"Maybe I'm afraid of you winning."

"Common courtesy dictates I let you win."

"What would you know about common courtesy?" The snap had returned to Blair's tone and, when Chuck glanced up automatically, to her countenance. Coils of hair hung damply on either side of her flushed cheeks. The flesh there was tender and treacherous, but the rest of her face was a study in tautness, in gritted teeth, in a deliberately smooth brow. "Your dismissal of me last night was welcome, that's true, but the manner in which you did it was not the manner of a gentleman, nor that of any man of substance. _Humphrey_," she sneered. "Would have phrased it better than you. he would've at least tried to spare my weak and maidenly heart."

"Your heart is neither weak nor maidenly."

"My heart is absent, according to you!" In spite of her words, she moved closer to him, positioning herself as if to take a shot with her head turned back over her shoulder and her gaze still upon him. "But what would you know about it? You haven't touched it. You have never touched it, not then, not now, and never shall you."

Chuck's nobler emotions were still present within him, but they were blanketed and choked by an ire that made him reckless. She drove him to distraction in her sweetest and foulest moods, and there was nothing fouler than the times she denied them. She'd done it for two whole years, and though he was giving her up, she would deny it no more.

Out of sight of the observers, he reached over her shoulder and placed his hand on the bare skin of her décolleté, off centre so the _bump-bump-bump_ of her heart was tangible and echoed within him. From such a way off, only the arch of his elbow would be visible. Blair drew in her breath as he dragged his fingers up and over her clavicle, along the bone that would have bare, naked and fleshless but for a thin covering of skin. He followed her neckline back to the place where her pulse was now hammering, pushing upwards as if it were begging to be touched. Chuck placed his palm carelessly atop it and dared to slide the rest of his hand down into her dress proper, to touch the outlines of what she'd sworn he'd never touch again through the finest of lace and silk and continue inward speculation on how very wrong his actions were, on how counterproductive this would be, on how Blair had laid her head back on his shoulder like a cat being stroked. More of her tautened, the sweeter and fouler parts, the parts which were more cat than kitten, the parts reflected in her quiet purr.

"Maybe the truth is you have no love in your heart," he murmured, his tongue lightly dancing against her ear as he spoke the most significant syllable. She would melt at that, she always did. "But maybe the more important truth is that lust is what drives you. Clockwork dolls are wound up, and so are you. You'll run and run until you find release, but even satisfaction is only fleeting for one such as you. You get wound up all over again, and your wheels and cogs then turn until you find something else that fails to slake your appetite."

"But what gets you," she responded, almost inaudibly. "Is that you couldn't do it either. I already told you: you're not man enough."

By this time, nearly all of Chuck's clamouring chivalrous intentions had fallen foul to the roaring in his ears. It was the strange pang of sorrow that accompanied her accusation, the truth that yes, he hadn't been man enough to discuss it with her, to ride out the storm with her, to give her the choice of whether to be disgraced or no that awoke him from this particular passion. It was what compelled him to grip Blair's shoulder and stand her upright with her back to him, to wipe the sweaty hand still clutching the croquet mallet – as if for dear life – on his handkerchief and to announce calmly, "Your turn." He could no longer see the raspberry hue of her lower lip, dark and plush like a plum, yielding like a cherry with the teeth behind like vicious little stones.

Good.

"Your turn," he repeated.

Whereupon she crumpled to the grass.

"Blair!" Came close to a shriek from the mouth of Serena, who flung down her glass of lemonade as if it were the offending party. Jenny didn't bother to stir herself, only flapped her arms as if a wasp had come near but Dan, who was now apparently pledged to the divine Miss van der Woodsen, body and soul, sprinted across the grass and fell to his knees at the invalid's side. Chuck was already there, had already lifted the tumbled head onto his knee. Ivy took the pragmatic approach of chasing after Blair's hat, which was attempting an escape with several hairpins in tow.

"It's the heat," Chuck reported, feeling the hot wrists and forehead. "Serena, some more water if you please. Humphrey, stop gawking at her, it's only a fainting fit. Go and get a cloth and an iced glass of juice."

"But –"

"Now, Humphrey."

He hurried away, and Blair quipped, "You saw to them very well. My compliments."

"You're supposed to be unconscious."

"I had something more to say." There was a frankness in her eyes, satiny brown and verging upon frightening. She was neither angry nor peaceful, uncharacteristically unreadable; that was what unnerved him. "You can put your hand wherever you wish, and it won't have any effect on me. You have your tactics, as any general does, and I have my defence. If that's how you want to play the game, you'd best know I'm wise to it." Chuck twirled a strand of hair and tugged, and Blair sighed. "You know what I like, yes, but I'm well aware of that. Despite whatever vestigial attraction my body may feel for you, my brain knows better." She smiled, and he frowned.

"The game is over, I rejected you. Accept it."

"Is it over?" And with her slippered foot, she stretched out and nudged the croquet ball through the last hoop. "No, _darling_, it isn't. You won't be rid of me until I know the truth of everything, the truth about before and after the wedding, the entire truth about you and Jenny, the truth about your rebuffing me, everything. And it does appear that I've won this round."

"This round of a game I didn't elect to have a part in?" Was Chuck's near growl, baited beyond belief.

Blair altered her inscrutable expression to prettily surprised. "Were you unaware that we were playing croquet today?"

He tried one last time. "I don't want you."

"You love me the way I loved you," she replied. Without all the queer and sour things passing through her eyes, the innocence of her pale face was despicable, horribly kissable. "And I decline, I refuse to let you stop."

* * *

><p><strong><em>Thanks to: <em> Laura, elise, nIGHTsrAVEN47, SaturnineSunshine, abelard, Eternally Romantic, Infinitywr, KM, lulubelle2010, Nikki999, Dr. GG, odyjha, BellaB2010, girlinthisworld, Maribells _and _Poinsettia. _I've had lo__ts of favourites/alerts recently, I'd love to hear from all the newies as well as my best beloved oldies. Any questions? Comments? If you don't want to review, come see me on Tumblr or Formspring. Throwing things at me or demanding smut is also appreciated._**


	12. The White Knight

**11. The White Knight**

_She didn't know how it happened, only that it had; the sand was coarse and gritty beneath her, against the part of her back exposed by her evening dress. Her hair had come down somehow, and her scalp tingled as strands seemed to stir of their own accord. She was electric, every brush to her skin another new connection. The air was scented with brine, and the party was too far on for loose tongues to wag at their absence. They were playing a waltz._

"_This isn't what you want,_"_ he said, though it was what he wanted. She could feel it from his bare skin, overheated as if were sick with her. She pulled on his lower lip with her teeth, pulled it into her mouth. She had to have him close to her._

"_Oh,_"_ she murmured, as if he were somehow a surprise. She saw the sky beyond his eyes in his irises, black as jet. To feel him, the weight of him, the solid pressure almost pushed her into ecstasy in and of itself – how long had it been since her breaths had pushed against him, her breasts and his ribs and the warmth that ran deeper still._

_And marvellously, she was unclothed._

"_This is what I want._"_ It was enough to make her cry, the hesitance and care with which he touched her, shaped the most dangerous part of her as if she were first the petals of the flower and then the delicate stigma and stamen, the fragile floriated mechanics within. _"_Oh, this is what I want._"

_It didn't hurt, not her nails digging into his back or his fingers gripping her hipbones, not the warm tide swirling around her ankles or salting her cheeks_…_there was too much happiness._

_Nothing hurt in dreams._

Blair awoke with a start, still lost in the tide. It flowed silently down her face in two perfect tears which were gone and forgotten the instant they soaked into her nightgown. "Lord," she whispered, careful not to wake Serena. "Protect me from the devil on my shoulder." To herself, she added, quieter still, "If only he were on my shoulder."

_**~#~**_

"What are you reading?"

"Pride and Prejudice, for the hundredth or so time. I've decided to move away from the more cryptic Austen novels – Northanger Abbey is still unfathomable, does she find something, does she not, the big secret being that his mother died of neglect is impossible – and towards a more achievable end."

"Which is?"

"A Bingley," Blair said dreamily. "An unchallenging, uncomplicated sort of man who's famed for his honesty and who charms as easily as he breathes."

"Don't you find him bumbling?"

"Not at all."

"He seems very susceptible to persuasion."

The book shut with a snap, and Blair raised her sharp gaze to meet Serena's guileless one. "It could almost be considered funny," she barked. "How many people reference those exact words to me." A skein of dark curls spilled over one shoulder, and Blair brushed them irritably aside before pausing and noting her friend's expression. "Serena? What is it?"

Serena chewed on her lower lip. She glanced down at her nails, flawlessly filed into smooth ovals and buffed to a high shine.

"Serena!" Blair was delighted by this undeniable tell of guilt. "What have you done? 'Fess," she demanded, their childhood command that must be obeyed, giving one no choice but to reveal all to the other. "'Fess what you've done."

"It's the middle of the night," Serena mumbled. "In the morning, maybe…"

"Now, or I won't eat for a day. Two days."

This too was reminiscent of the time before they were young ladies, the time when they were still allowed to be girls without so much as a thought of marriage and capital and the largest mansion on Fifth Avenue. It hadn't taken Blair long to discover Serena's tender heart and exploit it. Serena was resolute on most things, decided they must take turns playing the princess and the witch, must sneak petit fours from the kitchen as a pair so the punishment was equally shared; Blair had caught upon the idea of refusing to eat, distressing her poor friend to the point where she'd do just about anything for her. This manipulation, coupled with Eleanor's wont to send her daughter to her room without dinner for unladylike behaviour, had engendered in Blair a fortitude that saw her through many a missed mealtime and had in part contributed to her small bones, less than medium height and slim, close to thin proportions.

"You wouldn't."

"I would. For a secret? You know I would."

The section of the duvet Serena didn't collapse upon puffed up, sending a wave of cold air up over Blair's perspiration damp legs. She shivered. Serena, who'd been lying on her back, turned on her side and blinked several times. "When I realised that there was nothing between you and…and Dan –" She continued, despite the gleeful giggle that sounded forth from Blair. "I saw how difficult it would become if things came to pass between he and I. Chuck and Jenny, Dan and I, Sir Hugo and Mrs Smelt: we're all in pairs, and I didn't want you to feel lonely." She took a deep breath. "I told you how I know Asher?"

"He went to school with your cousin."

"With my Vanderbilt cousin."

"So?"

"Nathaniel Fitzwilliam Vanderbilt Archibald," Serena pronounced carefully. "Or Nate, as we call him, received my letter a few days ago. He's arriving tonight."

"Tonight?" A line formed between Blair's brows. "Don't be absurd, there are no trains this late."

"For William Vanderbilt's grandson, there are always trains. There is a private train, not just a car, there's practically a private railroad. I invited him here for you, before you decided on this course of action for Chuck…" Her voice tailed off, and she watched her near enough sister as one might watch an automaton and guess at its next trick. "B. Blair, what are you thinking?"

Blair rose and rang the bell. "I need Ivy."

"What?"

"I need Ivy, where's Ivy?"

"Why on earth do you need her at this time?"

"Because I need to wash!" There was a fierce animation in Blair's look, the same mania Serena had glimpsed when she'd made her plans for Chuck and their future. "We're going to meet Mr Archibald's train, and goddammit, he'd better be amiable."

Nate stepped off the train with not a little awkwardness, which was taken by every person hanging around in the hope of favour as a sign of a genuine gentlemanly nature. He didn't put on airs as they'd expected, seeming almost taken aback by those who swarmed around him to shake his hand, pick up his cases, inquire whereof he'd come and where or whom he was visiting. Much to his surprise – and relief – Serena's head appeared among the throng, the mane of hair he and his Vanderbilt cousins had spent hours knotting or hiding bugs in to tease her pulled back in a simple knot. She was very nearly the most beautiful woman of his acquaintance, and at times it made him sore that their relationship was too close for courtship: cousins by marriage, only twice removed.

"Nate!" She cried, completely oblivious of the throng around them, and threw her arms around his neck. They all chuckled, of course, the kind of laughter among men that indicates a feminine trait has been observed and must be remarked upon.

"It's been too long," he said warmly, stooping down to retrieve his hat from where she'd knocked it off. "But you shouldn't have come to meet me, it's far too late. I thought I'd check in quietly and surprise you at breakfast, how did you know I was on this train?"

Serena rolled her eyes. "The Gamesome Gallant reports all the comings and goings of New York's elite. A Vanderbilt attempting to leave the city inconspicuously? His readers must be agog."

"You still shouldn't have met me. I could have hailed a cab to take me to the hotel."

"It was Blair's idea. She was not to be deterred."

"Blair?"

"Blair," affirmed another voice as the crowd parted for the advent of a petite young woman whose unbound hair fell in long coils around her shoulders. She'd managed to cram most of it beneath a ridiculously large hat for the time of day, but this artifice was steadily collapsing into a mess of glossiness as the ribbon slipped. She met Nate's gaze with big dark eyes, doe eyes, deep water eyes that flashed as she blinked at him in assessment. "Miss Blair Cornelia Waldorf of Fifth Avenue."

"Where else?" He took her hand and was torn between shaking and bowing over it. She squeezed gently, and when she bit her lip he saw that it was against a smile. He swiftly cleared his throat. "I expect Serena has already made you aware of my first, middle and familial names. She may have also given you a medical history and several references from previous travel companions. I can promise you that I don't fall asleep on the beach, and even if I did, I wouldn't snore."

"We haven't even visited the beach properly yet, let alone had a chance to sleep on it."

"You're in Palm Beach…and you haven't been to the beach?"

"I know, appalling." She clapped her free hand over her mouth. "Not to insult our esteemed hosts, Lord no. You'll meet Mr and Mrs Bass later today, if you're not too exhausted by the journey."

An eyebrow rose to accompany the challenge.

"That changes everything," Nate replied, shadows moving over his hair and shading it gold and dun by turns as those around him moved forward and away, seeing to unspoken needs. "I'll have to sleep on the beach, I guess, since I fully intend to meet Mr and Mrs Bass, make amends for intruding on and assuming their hospitality and then bicycle to the beach."

"Bicycle?" Blair breathed. "Do you own one?"

"Don't you?"

"Mother never let me learn, and I wasn't in Newport the summer Serena got to."

"No time like the present," Serena chimed in, rejoining the conversation with a sly smile. "Nate will teach you to bicycle, B, won't you?" She slipped her arm through her cousin's. "What could be more proper than learning from one of the most eligible bachelors from one of the most eminent families in the state? We can certainly rent another one."

Blair took her friend's other arm and they three headed towards the exit, leaving Nate more than slightly confused as to what he was doing in Florida, what was happening to his luggage and what on earth Serena had up her sleeve. Blair herself was quietly optimistic, pleased as most girls would be by a blue gaze even brighter than Serena's, by fine posture and a strong jaw and the kind of gilt on the skin that comes from being wanted and liked, even more so if one were a Vanderbilt. Her contemplation was not completely innocent, however: half was devoted to Nate's virtues, her giddy fear of learning to bicycle and how fresh his conversation was. The other, which had locked her dream of earlier in a metaphorical trunk and was now sitting on it as images struggled to resurface and plague Blair's mind, was fixated upon the blackness of Chuck's countenance when such a specimen as Nathaniel Fitzwilliam Vanderbilt Archibald was presented to him with his morning coffee, and upon the slow shredding of his self-control as Blair laughed, flirted, recounted their late night rendezvous and readied herself to be as enchanting a pupil of bicycling as she possibly could.

Let him try and resist her then.

Let him fall at her feet.

_**~#~**_

_While I pine without the lady I love most, there is gossip enough to fuel us both: the little bird that told me Nate Archibald of the Vanderbilt clan left the city a few days ago has been kind enough to reveal his destination. It appears the young gentleman has travelled to Florida and has plans to make his overtures to the Basses and their guests today. This humble observer can't help but wonder why he chooses such an odd time of year, and who of the party he has gone to see. His cousin and confidante, Miss Serena van der Woodsen, Goldilocks with her three Bass-Humphrey bears? Or could it be the dusky Miss B who has piqued his interest, so far from home and the rigours society imposes on her fashionable frame?_

_My best beloved in Palm Beach will surely have an update soon._

Chuck folded his newspaper, forewarned and therefore forearmed that a Vanderbilt was about to be sprung on him. He'd allow Jenny the surprise and hope she didn't disgrace herself dribbling compliments all over the newcomer, something he himself would not do, even if, as he suspected, this was another card up Blair's sleeve now put in play to infuriate him. Her deviousness had to be admired, but it was more worrying to Chuck than the goodness at her core. That shining, silent part made him cleave to his promise to let her go and let her be happy more than ever, but her cunning was as bewitching as the pink cheeked girl in the ladies' lounge had been, startled, humiliated, enraged beyond belief that he'd intruded upon her private time in a public place.

The coffee that morning was strong enough to make him dizzy.

Jenny sipped her chocolate with one hand curved beneath it, careful not to spill a drop on her pure white frock. She rather liked the word 'frock', she'd decided, and would start inserting it into conversation as soon as possible. The snowy white layers were sheer vanity, of course, but there could be nothing wrong with vanity when it only served to highlight the extreme narrowness of her waist and carefully shaped voluptuous upper body. The women around here were very well endowed, and Jenny was determined to keep up, even if that did mean stuffing her stays with wool and lacing herself all the tighter.

"Our guests are late," she commented.

"Your guests are late. I didn't even invite you, if memory serves."

"Do you plan on being sour all morning?"

"No, I plan on being sickeningly charming in a few minutes' time."

"Chuck…" Jenny rolled the single syllable as if it tasted pleasant. "What are you planning? What are you hiding from me?"

Dan had been sitting all this while beside them, peeling an orange. Its rich smell hung in the air. "I find your husband incapable of keeping secrets, Jen. He's always brutally honest with whomever about whatever it is he needs them to know."

Chuck gave his brother-in-law a hard look, which Dan returned. He must have sensed there was more to that scene on the croquet green than either Chuck or Blair had given him credit for. That made him dangerous. Selecting an orange from the bowl for himself, Chuck replied, "Some people deserve honesty. Some people deserve brutality in that they're told who and what they are instead of it being painted in a way that makes them feel better." He removed a section of peel. "You'll agree that what's inside counts here, where the flesh is the part we're concerned with; but this world, the world you write about is concerned with the skin. Yet I see the flesh beneath the skin, Humphrey, perhaps more than others do. I don't care to mince my words if what lies beneath is rotten or oversweet."

"No one could accuse you of being oversweet," was Dan's retort, though he kept his gaze studiously on his plate.

Jenny twitched. She could feel the tension, had no idea what was behind it and was becoming more curious by the minute. It bordered on a miracle that then the doors opened onto the veranda and Blair, Serena, and quite the handsomest man she'd ever seen came down the steps and made to join them.

The stranger swept his hat from his head. "My apologies, Mrs Bass, for intruding on your breakfast. My name is –"

"Nathaniel 'Nate' Archibald," Chuck supplied drily, forgetting for a moment not to relish the ire on Blair's face as she took her seat on the opposite side of the table. He stood as she sat, extending a hand and trying to smile. He'd never been very good at real smiles, and today it appeared that only one side of his mouth was mobile. "Miss van der Woodsen's cousin, powering through the fatigue that would naturally affect any man who met two ladies at the railway station in the dead of night." He resumed his seat, and was startled by a sharp pain in his ankle. Blair appeared suddenly fascinated by a cube of melon.

Nate accepted and released Jenny's hand before taking the chair at her side. "I hear you've yet to go to acquaint yourselves with the ocean, Mrs Bass."

"Who told you?" Her tone was wretchedly syrupy.

"Miss Waldorf."

"You're here now," said Chuck pleasantly. "And I have no doubt your presence will help keep Miss Waldorf moist." He received another kick for his trouble and struck, trapping the smaller foot beneath his own. Blair's fork clattered to the table, masking her small gasp of pain. Her toes moved insistently as she tried to wriggle her way out, but Chuck relented only when she stilled, flushed and complained of the heat that morning.

"Mr Archibald has kindly agreed to give me private lessons in bicycling," Blair informed the party.

"You don't have one of those ghastly bicycling costumes, do you?" Jenny snorted as she quartered a grapefruit, only to mash it into pulp and not bother with consumption. "I think bicycling must be the most unsophisticated thing in the world."

"Serena has one that can be altered in a matter of hours."

"You don't intend to learn today?"

"I intend to learn as soon as possible." The melon was macerated but, like Jenny, Blair didn't eat. "That is, as soon as Mr Archibald has recovered enough to teach me."

Chuck drained his coffee cup and drawled, "Do give our new guest time to recover, won't you? In my experience, any kind of riding has a tendency to tire not only you, but any other participants also." He expected another kick and was paradoxically rather hoping for one – all this malice was part of the master plan to make her happy, after all, any pleasure he took from their back-and-forth an accidental by-product – but instead Blair lowered her lashes. Chuck was glad she was aggrieved, saddened by the same; then the sharp heel of her shoe struck his shin, a blow which must have taken an awful lot of geometric calculations on her part and which throbbed like a son of a bitch.

It was out of the question to kick her back.

A thorough spanking was in order, if impossible and not an idea he should be pursuing when his wife was at the table.

**~#~**

Blair had wanted to start straight after breakfast, but there had been the petty matters of digestion and primping and decorum to consider before she was helped into her altered outfit by Ivy.

"I look like Scheherazade," was the dispirited appraisal as she eyed the full blue bloomers and long coat despondently. "If the king had thought Scheherazade might get cold over the winter and, just like a man, couldn't find a colour to suit her. You've felt the air out there, Ivy, I shall boil."

"They're wearing short jackets to bicycle in London, I saw it in the fashion papers."

"Even the English are more fashionable than me!" Blair sat down heavily on the bed and rolled her eyes to Heaven. Ivy stifled a giggle, politely reporting it as a sneeze.

"You're lovely, Miss Waldorf."

"I have to be more than lovely: charming, alluring, exciting…" She bounced back upright and swayed slightly at the force of the unladylike movement. "And I'm wearing a man's hat."

Admittedly, the straw boater pinned to Blair's head was too angular for her fine features and doll-like costuming, but that was what one wore when one bicycled. Its deep blue ribbon matched the bloomers and coat, which was tightly buttoned over a translucent blouse Blair hoped might provide some relief from the heat. Ivy knew it wouldn't, but also knew better than to say so. "Mr Archibald won't see you as anything but charming," she promised. "Gentlemen don't know about hats and illustrated fashion papers and the like, not ordinary men."

"And what of extraordinary men?"

"Mrs Bass' maid says that Mr Bass often remarks on his wife's apparel while she's being dressed, _and_ he knows who all the dressmakers are, _and_ he knows when something's been put on wrong. Elise says he told Mrs Bass to let Elise put her stays on but she would put them on herself, in front of him, and then he waited until she'd got everything else on to tell her that she'd laced herself wrong and would have to start from the beginning."

"Is that true, Ivy?"

"It is, ma'am."

Blair was silent as she considered this and then, in the calmest manner imaginable, she pulled the hat from her head and flung it into the far corner of the room. Her coiffure fell to pieces and Ivy let out a squeak as her mistress sat down in front of the vanity with no other explanation than a clipped, "Now do it again, and _don't_ stick any more pins into my scalp, and _don't_ let me catch you repeating servants' gossip."

Nate decided to wait in the cool of the lobby rather than at the base of the steps as previously agreed. He was attempting to puzzle out some figures in the newspaper when there was an insistent click-clacking on the stairs, and as he glanced up and back through the marble spindles, he spied Miss Waldorf marching downward with her hands thrust deep into her jacket pockets. She reached the foot of the staircase and headed straight for the desk, demanding her messages of the clerk in a brusque tone with only the most perfunctory of 'please's. Nate watched as the clerk scurried away and Blair tapped her foot impatiently, casting a look over her shoulder as she waited for his return.

She froze.

"Mr Archibald. I…"

He rose.

"You have a temper, don't you?"

Her cheeks flamed. "I do not."

"You came down the stairs like you were going into battle. I think you do."

"I don't. I most certainly do not."

"You most certainly do." She glared at him, which was momentarily chastening, yet somehow more provocation to follow her out of the grand doors into the midday heat. "I may not know you very well," Nate continued, following along behind as Blair began to head up the avenue to who knew where. "But somebody has annoyed you and, if I'm not mistaken, your hands are in your pockets because you'd like very much to strike them."

Blair whirled on him, her hat sliding over one ear. "Ladies," she responded evenly, despite her expression. "Do not strike people."

"Nor do they have tempers?"

"Nor do they have tempers."

"It's natural to have one, you know." He tugged gently on her right pocket, coaxing her fingers out as one might an affronted animal. "A temper, I mean. I get in an awful one when one of my cousins beats me at sailing. Even my mother has one, and she's one of the most highly regarded women in the country." He slid his own index finger into Blair's pocket, presumptuously stroking the back of her palm through her glove; his experience was that ladies could be pacified in much the same way as horses, and the moue of Blair's mouth relaxing was yet more evidence he was right. "The question is whether your sparring partner or I have offended you too much to try bicycling. You seemed in quite a fever for it this morning."

The muggy air barely stirred as Blair sighed. "I do still want to try – if you'll have me, of course." She wrinkled her nose. "I can be a beast, Mr Archibald, I hope you're aware of that now."

Nate chuckled and withdrew his hand. "But are you a beast with balance?"

"Pardon?"

"Are you ready to bicycle?"

An hour later, it had been conclusively proven that neither beauty nor beastliness was any indicator of balance. Blair had fallen from the saddle so many times that the back of her abhorrent blue coat was caked in dust and her blouse clung damply beneath the arms. She was soundly irritated as she remounted for the umpteenth time, too tired to pedal hard, and coattails caught around her legs and brought her crashing to earth. The bicycle landed painfully on her ankles.

Nate quickly removed the contraption and helped her up. He himself was unstained and coolly comfortable in his shirt and trousers, while she had damp strands of hair clinging to her forehead and a wildness to her gaze.

"Take off your coat."

"I've told you already, it's not proper."

"So is dropping dead of heatstroke. It's only me here, I won't judge you."

"My blouse…" Blair hesitated. "It's an undershirt. It's meant to be an undershirt. There are some things a gentleman shouldn't be able to see, that's why ladies wear so many layers in the first place."

"And what will I see? Some linen, maybe a few laces?" He helpfully flapped his hands in front of her face in lieu of a fan, and Blair laughed. She surprised herself by laughing, it was usually something that had to be reflected upon and brought on at the opportune moment. "Serena and I used to swim in grandfather's lake wearing nothing at all when it was this hot, and there was no shame in that. Besides…" He lowered his voice. "Grandfather Vanderbilt isn't here to judge you and demand _you_ dress yourself in a pink towel from the ladies' washroom."

Blair worked back through his argument to its inception and quietly wondered: she was so straight-laced when she had no reason to be, when the root of her troubles had been not being as distant and contained as she ought to have been. She had recently re-adopted her mother's ideals and, while those were all well and good in public, hadn't she been reasonably good in the two years between very bad and very nearly too good? She had smoked cigarettes and let boys light them for her, let them buy her things and gamble over her dances. Maybe the way to live was not to deny herself everything, not to assume that playing away from her society self would lead her straight back to Chuck and that sainted goodliness was the only way to go. Defiantly, she turned on the spot and thrust her arms out behind her.

"Pull," she instructed, and Nate suppressed a grin as he peeled off the heavy fabric. Blair took in a deep, almost dizzying gulp of air.

"Better?"

"Better," she agreed.

"Do you want to go back?"

She peeked back at him, wishing for a spark as she caught the tail end of a smile. Did he think he'd beaten her?

Harold had raised his Blair-Bear a Waldorf, and no Vanderbilt was going to smirk at a Waldorf as if her feminine weakness amused him.

"Again."

* * *

><p><strong><em>The tale of Goldilocks wasn't known by that name until a few years later, but I've left it unchanged so you don't get confused, <em>****_I don't get confused and no one throws anything. Thanks to:_ ****abelard, L, Eternally Romantic, That Pam, Elle, Laura, Crazy4Spike, flipped, Kate2008, BellaB2010, teddy bear, fiona249, nIGHTSrAVEN47, SaturnineSunshine, ggloverxx19, Nikki999, odyjha, jamieerin _and_ Maribells.  
><em>Anonymous reviewer <em>Han_, if _'_this shit is really lagging_'**_**...go and read something else.**_


	13. Possession

**12. Possession**

Ropes stretched out into the water like strands of manmade weed, and every few feet clung a shrieking lady; bathing costumes of pink, green, pale purple, pale blue were pulled hastily down over thighs as each wave crested and each girl clung to her neighbour, as if she'd been lured into the ocean against her will, as if it might overwhelm her the second she slackened her grip. The sun beat down onto a murky blue sea, and the great and good – or at least, well acquainted and beautiful – lounged or paddled or dozed indolently in the heat.

A brisk wind whipped up the hair on Blair's arms, but she was already shaking, had been from the moment she'd set foot on the beach. Her bare toes curled into the sand, coated in dark golden stickiness, but she didn't dare go into the water.

That said, she wasn't going to hang on the rope and squeal like some cissy miss either.

"Going in?"

Blair did squeal, much to her personal horror and Nate's amusement. His bathing suit fitted well, accentuating the muscles in his chest and baring his tanned arms. She wondered how he'd managed to become so bronzed while living in New York, and asked him so to gloss over her blushes. Nate gave her a queer feeling in the pit of her stomach: it wasn't butterflies, but it was expectant, as if there were a time limit on mere casual conversation and her body was telling her so.

"I'm not much in the city," he replied, stepping to one side and joining her in the surf. "I like to travel. New York is too oppressive for a long stay, don't you agree? Too many parties, too many dinners, too many expectations."

"I like to travel, but I was born in New York – Manhattan is my island, Fifth is my territory. New York is my home."

"And mine. But don't you ever want to fly the coop?"

A fresh wash drenched their feet, and Blair stared down at white skin, violet veins, carefully pedicured New York nails. "A coop suggests a door and a bolt," she said slowly, choosing each word with care so as not to offend her apparently laissez faire companion. "I am free to go where I want, do what I wish, see who I will. Broadway has everything I desire by way of goods, I go to the opera, I go to the theatre, I walk in the park, I meet my friends for champagne and brioche." She met Asher for such things, anyway, and his unopened letter on her desk gave her a warm glow of pleasure. "Besides," Blair added, not a little cuttingly, "Having fine feathers on top doesn't mean we're common hens underneath. Common hens have a coop, and we have New York."

"So you'd happily live there forever?" Nate challenged, passing the palm of his hand over the crown of his head and doing absolutely nothing to either disturb or calm a sweep of pomaded hair.

Blair recognised the danger of losing his interest being too pert and pursed her lips. It was a fact of life that not all men liked to be preached to and also that Nate was still a stranger to her, not part of her usual congregation. "I suppose I'll live wherever my husband lives," she deferred. "But for my part, I would like that place to be one I knew and loved as well as New York."

She'd been watching his profile as she spoke, and their eyes met as he turned his head. Had she been too quick to accede? Too slow? His look held the sense of scrutiny, and it was a look that Blair knew well: Nate Archibald was trying to make her out, a task which most of polite society had tried at some time or another.

This opinion mattered, though.

"Blair!"

The moment broke as both Blair and Nate followed the direction of the call to the sand dunes which led down from the road. Waving cheerlessly with a cheerful smile on her face was a familiar figure in a black bespoke bathing suit, its legs cut perilously high to reveal as much thigh as possible before her stockings began. The buckles on her suspenders gleamed in the sunshine and blinded several bathers. Strands of bleached hair swirled around her head as Jenny marched towards them with the determined expression of a swordsman about to demand satisfaction. Blair self-consciously smoothed down her own suit, the same one she'd worn to swim privately with Serena in Newport the previous few years – how she wished now she'd sought advice from someone other than her best friend, and had something new run up that didn't include a wide sailor's collar and nautical stripes.

"Aren't you sweet?" Jenny cooed, halting a little way away and waiting for Chuck, who was moving at the speed of an unwilling eighty year old, to catch her up. She batted her blackened lashes, and Blair was glad of her presence only because the gradual slide of makeup down her cheeks would provide hours of entertainment.

"Mr Archibald, would you be a dear and go and rent me a chair? One of the red ones?" Down went those lashes, up and down.

Nate smiled, acquiesced and immediately departed for the kiosk.

Chuck, who looked lean and slightly like a disgruntled shark in his bathing costume, suggested, "One for Miss Waldorf, perhaps."

"Mr Archibald will get me one."

"No." Chuck overruled her with the arch of one dark brow. "He won't."

_**~#~**_

Serena was having a lovely, lazy day, which were few and far between when Blair sometimes slept and sometimes paced and sometimes shot up like a firecracker at six o'clock in the morning. After rising at the more sociable hour of eleven, she'd had Ivy run her a bath and luxuriated in it until her fingertips pruned. Once dry, she began to brush her hair the requisite one hundred times and to think of her mother, who'd taught her that magic number for strength and shine, and her brother, who was himself going from strength to strength at boarding school and shining in every class. Serena worried about Eric every day, but always in silence, never mentioning her anxiety to Lily or even Blair. Like every other man of his persuasion, Eric didn't have the choice of finding love and happiness amongst the echelons of the elite; he'd marry, but the best case scenario would be union with a female friend who was kind and understanding and who made no demands of him. The person his heart chose would have to remain a secret, known only as the younger van der Woodsen's drinking buddy or betting partner. People could suspect, but never know. The truth, his sister reflected, really wasn't as liberating as everyone made it out to be.

There was a knock at the door as she was fastening her robe and, guessing it to be Ivy, she called 'come in' without thinking.

Dan took a step into the room and instantly retreated. "I'm so sorry, I –"

"No! It was all my fault, I was sure –"

"I should've never –"

"Dan."

"Serena."

She blushed and toyed with an errant thread. "I'm going to propose something that I do hope you won't take offence to."

He was having a hard time trying to moisten the inside of his mouth as she peeped up at him from the stool before the vanity, her fingers still wrapped around a brush with a pretty porcelain back. "Go ahead," he choked.

"I get dressed behind that screen, and you take a seat on the couch and confess whatever you came up here to confess, or explain, or discuss – oh, and you don't tell anyone that I made this proposition."

"You have my word."

"Excellent!"

As he sat down, Dan wondered at the light airiness of the room and found it hard to believe that Blair too resided here. He could easily divine which was her side – there was a neat stack of books on the nightstand, a silk sleeping mask and nothing else, whereas Serena's bedside played host to a jumble of hairpins, two slender novels, an inlaid box, several letters, a blotter and a felt rabbit worn almost to pieces. Its lopsided smile made Dan himself smile and decide that maybe the room wasn't so light when Serena wasn't there, when Blair lay alone reading Mary Wollstonecraft or concocting potions to allure or repel his sister's husband as suited her mood. He felt sympathy for her on that front, but could adjust his emotions no further until he worked out whether Blair was consciously changing her mind or whether there was some underlying cause that she herself was unaware of. Playing games with Chuck on the croquet green had been stupid, and Blair Waldorf wasn't stupid.

"Serena." He shook his head to empty it of that curious image. "I came here to ask…no, to humbly ask…very humbly, that is…"

"Yes?" Her tangerine coloured kimono was flung over the partition.

"That is…what I wanted to very humbly ask you…"

This was his problem, why he could never take girls anywhere except those he was failing to seduce, and then only to public dining cars. Sitting up ramrod straight, Dan pulled his lapels straight, cleared his throat and inquired, "How do you feel about automobile travel?"

_**~#~**_

"Your feet are worryingly small."

"Worryingly?"

"How do you balance yourself?"

Blair laughed and resettled herself on her precious red lounger. "God gave me grace and the wits to walk without wobbling. How you gentlemen manage with outsize plates and bowls instead of feet, I have no idea."

Now Nate was chuckling along with her, and Jenny was glaring daggers at them both. What was it about Blair Waldorf, she pondered, that made eligible young bachelors forget that she was wearing an unfashionably plain bathing suit over her unfashionably pale skin and that she hadn't even bothered to make up her face that morning? She barely resembled the famous beauty Jenny had so admired and who was written up in the paper for her elegance and splendour. Jenny recalled a frock of Blair's constructed almost entirely from ivory lace with a creamy soft satin lining, a gown which had prompted Theodore Gansevoort to raise a toast to 'the bride of Manhattan'. Losing love, losing the life she could've had with Chuck had made Blair seem more real and less like a lovely apparition, but never did Jenny feel on the same level as her former mistress. It could've been the way she conversed, the affected little twist Eleanor added to certain words which her daughter did without meaning to, but it was more likely the fact that her timing was perfect in regards to when to laugh, when to smile, when to lie back, tilt her chin towards the sky and remain silent.

"Chuck," Jenny snapped. "Fetch me a lemonade."

The polar opposite of his wife, Chuck had been trying doggedly to avoid contemplation of Blair, and to that end had had Monkey brought down from the hotel with his blanket and all the other accoutrements he'd collected between the Bass residence and Palm Beach. It was still droll, after two hours, to watch the silly creature prod the sand with his paw, pronounce it too hot with a discomfited _yip_ and retreat back onto his blanket, pushing his cold nose into Chuck's knee as if there were something his master could do about the temperature. Despite such a comedy of canine error, Chuck's mind was not his own. It meandered every time the Vanderbilt opened his mouth, focusing unkindly on his coiffed hair, vapid remarks and clean cut good looks. It had occurred to him that Nate's remarks might not be vapid, that it may only be his perception, but fixation upon a new problem led him away from obsession over the old, and was therefore no bad thing.

"I'll get a pitcher," he decided, grateful for an excuse to be away from the group.

"Don't worry yourself about us, Mr Bass." Nate stood, brushing sand from the backs of his thighs. "I can get lemonade for myself and Miss Waldorf, who I have no doubt would be glad of a parasol rental."

"My wife may be in need of a parasol too," Chuck announced grimly, as if Jenny were due to go up in flames at any minute. "So perhaps I should get two."

"Or I could."

"You're forgetting my roots, Mr Archibald." A breeze whipped up, scattering sand. Monkey whined. "New money men," Chuck pronounced, with his black gold eyes slanting and his brow furrowed and no idea whatsoever what either he or Nate was playing at. "Were born of fetching and carrying. I'm far better equipped to see to the ladies' needs."

Nate's nostrils flared. Blair swung her legs off her deck chair and called Monkey to her, eyeing the two men as a stern mama might her unruly offspring. "Mr Bass," she decreed. "The parasols. Mr Archibald, the lemonade. One may pay for one and one for the other so that both your egos are satisfied. I'm going to see the censor about what times it's safe to bathe."

And Jenny, in a series of languorous movements that made it appear as if she'd taken leave of both her bones and her senses, leaned down, unfastened her suspender and brazenly rolled down one stocking to the knee. "And I," she purred. "Will ignore the censor's ridiculous rules and wait for the two of you to hurry back and attend me."

Monkey made a small huffing sound and trotted down to the water's edge to relieve himself.

Blair, while disgusted, understood the sentiment perfectly.

_**~#~**_

The automobile whirred magnificently as they travelled through some of the strangest country Serena had ever encountered. The leaves were damp, as if with perspiration, and of a shade of green that verged upon livid. Things scuttled out of their way as they bumped down a road with no signs, no paving, no signs of human activity or habitation.

"Should you like to travel?" Dan almost had to shout over the noise of the engine.

"I would!" Serena had clapped one hand over her left ear and seemed comically to be trying to listen to him only with the right. "Unfortunately, husbands aren't really conducive to travel."

"No?"

She considered the question while the chassis rattled beneath them and the wind blew her hair back like a pennant. "Imagine them as politicians and we, the wives, like royalty. They depart, return, pass through and depart again while we stay put and, although we're not necessary in order for them to legislate, they always like to know we're there if they need our wiles."

"Like a charming enforcer?"

A giggle bubbled forth from Serena, and Dan couldn't help grinning in tandem with the delightful sound. "Exactly like a charming enforcer. Who needs a pistol or a club when I have tea and haughty tosses of the head?" She sobered a little, and her bright tone tempered. "But that's not all I want, you see. I like to throw parties, of course, and I would try to be a good helpmeet to my husband. Yet I am not an ornament for a mantelpiece because I know how to dress and which shoes should be worn with which dress. I am not the best china, to be brought out only when people need impressing. That isn't the life for me."

The engine spluttered and Dan took his leave of the conversation, muttering endearments to the steering wheel as he mulled over what had been said. He'd never been of the opinion that Serena would settle down to heartless domesticity, and he was well aware that her parties were the toast and sometimes scandal of the city; what he hadn't known was the vehemence of her feelings, and of her fear. Domesticity was the last thing she wanted, a girl like that, an adventurer. How many young ladies of her calibre would risk taking an unchaperoned ride in a potentially dangerous vehicle with a young man who made his living from novels? She should've been panning for gold or sailing a pirate ship, or the kind of great, salacious beauty whose glorious features hid her talent for espionage. Here was a girl for spice markets and midnight dances, not first best parlours and next best ballrooms.

"You must be hungry," he shouted, and they both jumped. The engine hadn't been quite loud enough to negate his voice when coupled with their silence.

"I am, actually."

"Then I'm going to propose something." A slow smile broke on her face, bringing it back to life as he continued, "And I do hope you won't take offence to it."

The world was shaded amber as the car drew up before what was at best a shack, and at worst not worth mentioning. It had a wide porch with splintered steps leading up to it and, as Dan guided Serena up them, she was surprised to see how well swept the rickety boards were. They trod tentatively across the porch, and a brass bell over the door rang – it seemed to never stop ringing, for their arrival was accompanied by a sudden clashing of pots and a mysterious bubbling as a comfortably shaped woman with an unruly grey bun laid down her embroidery and gestured them to a table. Serena gazed all around her in awe: what from the outside appeared shabby and not fit for habitation was clean and tidy, with obvious but well done repairs. Four round tables filled the room, each laid with a white cloth and silverware for two.

"What is this place?"

"Haven't you ever been to a restaurant before?"

She spun on the spot, and he raised his eyes to Heaven as if she were the silliest creature ever to descend from its heights.

"You could've simply invited me out to dinner," Serena pointed out, then sat.

Dan took the chair at her elbow, for such a small place didn't even afford the space for diners to sit opposite one another. "I could have," he agreed. "But this way I could be sure you'd say yes."

_**~#~**_

"How's the angle of your parasol, Miss Waldorf?"

Blair didn't even glance up from her book.

"Faultless, thank you."

"I hope the lemonade is satisfactory…_dear_." The word stuck in Chuck's throat.

Jenny stroked the portion of her thigh bared by the taboo lowered stocking. "It's delicious." Slowly, sensually, she rolled down the other one to match and arched her back.

All this undulating and undressing was apparently too much for the beach censor, who marched over – sweating profusely in buttoned up uniform – and hissed, "Madam, I must ask you to…to restore your suit to its previous condition. Other bathers and users of this beach may be offended, and our code of conduct clearly states that the appropriate portions of ladies must be covered at all times." Yet he kept glancing down at Jenny's legs, down and back up again, then running a finger around his collar in an attempt to loosen it.

Blair was not amused.

She snapped her own left suspender, pulling it away from her skin so far that it first frayed and then came apart completely. The three men stared at her, the censor most apoplectic but with Chuck definitely in the running for second place and Nate only just lagging behind.

Jenny was amused. "Pay the man, Chuck," she ordered, and closed her eyes. She'd been trying to induce graphic dreams of making love so as to get a better idea of how to do it, and she wasn't going to waste precious minutes worrying about a censor. Blair had nothing to add, but gazed blandly at all three as if she had no idea what they were so bothered about. Chuck reacted first, removing a small pile of bills from his dog's bag and beginning to count. Nate, not to be outdone, retreated behind the loungers and retrieved a billfold. Both men sorted notes as fast as they could, and then they began all over again to tussle about who was paying for whom, who was responsible for whose offence and who was the alpha male of the Palm Beach pack. Blair, idly stroking Monkey, thought to herself that they should've followed his example and marked their territory if they felt so strongly about it.

Not that she wanted to be used as a target for urination, of course.

"Bass." She summoned him once the censor had been shooed away and Jenny was snoring quietly.

He didn't even turn around. "What?"

That irritated her. "We walk." Blair shot an apologetic smile at Nate, but gave no explanation before she stalked away across the beach, moving too fast for an exchange but ever aware that Chuck was prowling along behind her, maybe noting the lack of bathers this late in the afternoon and wondering why she was leading him through a group of trees onto a crescent of softer sand. Her reasoning then became obvious: this part of the beach was deserted, though their section was still visible through the foliage.

"Are you planning to kill me?" He drawled.

Irritation became infuriation, and Blair put her two hands against his chest and pushed. "I am not a pawn!" She spat. "And nor is your wife, for all she's a morally bankrupt whore."

"I can't think what you mean."

"So you have more money than Nate, or he's stronger than you – so what? Nobody cares but the two of you, and I don't be care to shunted back and forth just so you can stop him having the upper hand around here. I don't need either of you to pay for things, as you well know, seeing as how I was born with more than enough to keep me in chairs and parasols and lemonade! And since when do you care about being a gentleman? Since when is Jenny your 'dear'? Why change now? What do you want?"

He gave no reply, gazing towards the ocean as if it were of very great import.

Almost apoplectic herself by now, Blair removed her hands from Chuck's person and struck him on the shoulders, Dutch doll spots of rage ablaze in her cheeks. "Answer me!"

_**~#~**_

"What is this?"

Two brimming bowls had been set down on the table, their rich aroma stinging, sweet and spicy.

"This is my proposition."

"But what is it?"

Dan gestured, and Serena opened her mouth to accept a spoonful. She almost wished she hadn't, for a moment later it had caught fire and was blazing wildly, bringing tears to her eyes. The thick broth had so many flavours – duck, pork, shellfish, greens, tomatoes – that Serena didn't want to swallow and lose it, but had to gulp it down even as perspiration broke out on her forehead and Dan began to apologise.

"I can't believe that I –"

"Dan, wait –"

"Too much, you have my deepest –"

"Dan."

"Serena."

They couldn't help but laugh at the repetition of their earlier awkwardness. Boldly, hardly believing herself to be doing such a thing again, Serena placed her hand atop Dan's. "I liked it," she told him. "Very much." She noticed the skin of his arm pucker into gooseflesh and experienced an odd mixture of emotions, starting out at pity and embarrassment and melting into yearning and a strange sense of hilarity. Her throat convulsed, once, twice as she swallowed. "I like you, Dan," Serena 'fessed, as Blair had bade her to about Nate's coming. "Very much." Her fingers curled around and strayed across his palm, finding the pads of his inner knuckles, his fortune telling lines. "Though you don't cause me to cry simply by being near you, which whatever this is does."

"I pray," was Dan's response. "Never to make you cry, Serena."

All the air disappeared from the room, all the surroundings, everything but their two selves.

"Who did you love first?" She demanded, but quite gently.

"Vanessa Abrams was my childhood friend. She sickened as she grew older in the manner that Jenny has, this addiction to the finer things, and her parents took her away for her own good. She now resides in a sanatorium." He sighed. "What about you?"

"Cousin Nate." Dan's eyes darted immediately upwards to meet Serena's, which were as blue and tranquil as a picture book ocean. She was swift to reassure him. "That's not why I brought him here, he's here for Blair, but…he may have been my first taste of equality. He ran races with me and swam with me and competed against me in archery, and never did he deny me or label me weak for being female."

"Serena."

"Yes?"

"Who does Blair love?"

She leaned her forehead against his and let out all her breath. "You know that," she returned. "And when Blair's heart manages to communicate that truth to Blair's head, we shall all know about it."

Dan had had a plan, a plan that involved explaining the history behind their bowls of gumbo, its origins in Louisiana, the differences between the Creole and Cajun varieties, the African language from which the word had originated. His mother had once claimed he'd been born talking, and long silences were hard for Dan Humphrey, author, who when he couldn't speak wrote his words down lest they'd be forgotten. He'd travelled from Brooklyn to see his sister and found a woman who was not his sister, travelled to Florida with Hamlet, Hero and Beatrice. He'd tried and failed with Blair for the sake of the old Jenny, but he would try with Serena for his own sake. He was an outsider in her glittering world, the world he put on paper, but he was damned if he was going to be lonely forever.

"Serena," he repeated, then tilted his head and laid his lips delicately against hers.

He doubted he'd ever done anything delicate in his life before.

And she, the young lady of a grand domicile on Park Avenue, stitched her fingers through his hair and kissed him delicately back.

_**~#~**_

"What do you want?" Blair practically shrieked, the final syllable hoarse.

Chuck did answer her, but not at all in the way that was expected or acceptable. He seized hold of her, squeezing as tightly as a corset around her waist, forcing Blair to freeze and gasp. She braced herself against him, holding him at arm's length but Chuck, like the predator he'd been so often told he was, was not going to wait for a carefully constructed wall between them and another sermon on what Blair was and wasn't to him. He reeled her in closer, closer, observing quite dispassionately as her pupils dilated and she became pliant in his arms.

He was above this.

He would not be subject to this.

It proved, as he'd suspected, impossible to disconnect properly from the body one holds nearest and dearest. He first pressed a kiss to the centre of Blair's mouth, a precise point of pressure which made the forbidding pout slacken and become sweet. She refused to lead him on and yet her lips parted the second time they touched, partaking in the sin, not pushing him away but not getting any closer. She stayed exactly where she was, her thoughts flooded with past history, enough past kisses to drown in. Blair knew Chuck's every response before it happened, the motions of his hands, the growl in the back of his throat if she played a little too fast and a little too rough.

She guessed when the kiss would end.

Guessed again.

Failed again.

"Shall I tell you what I want?" His tongue traced a circle around the inside of her mouth, teasing again and again past her teeth, shortening her breath to shallow pants. She fisted her hands in the thin material of his bathing costume, close to frightened by the heat of his skin beneath. His hold on her waist was about to crush her, she was dizzy and dazed and the evening light was lilac. She strove to keep her inhalations even as he continued, "I want him to want you." Blair was confused and tried to move away, but his grip never slackened. "I want him to be jealous of us," Chuck murmured, nipping at her bottom lip to leave it full, plush and madder coloured. "Because you see, since I don't want you –" He impressed this point by tugging lightly on the tip of her tongue, eliciting a low whine. Blair's eyes widened. "Since I don't want you, it seems only fitting that I pass you on to someone who seems fitting, and the Vanderbilt, like the proverbial oatmeal, is neither too hot, too cold, but just right."

"I…I concur."

"How nice it is that we agree on something."

"How very agreeable."

"I concur."

She tucked a tendril of hair back behind one ear and leaned away from him. The tiny flower covering her hairpin came loose and fluttered to earth. "This must be torture for you, my being so abhorrent and yet so close to you. Have you done enough, do you think, to allure poor Nate and rid yourself of me forever?"

"Yes," was Chuck's response, suddenly brusque, as he thrust her away from him and turned on his heel.

"Chuck."

He paused.

"Thank you."

"Anything to keep you from fawning over me any longer."

The footprints he left in the sand were too deep for a man with a supposed lifting of the spirit, but Blair was too busy broadcasting a glance of sudden penitence in Nate's direction to notice that Chuck trod as heavily as if he were walking to his own execution. As he approached, it became evident the other young man's brow was thunderous; he jogged across the sand, through the trees, strode over and almost past Blair before she could catch his arm.

"Where are you going?"

"He's married, how dare he."

"Mr Archibald –"

"I saw you fighting against him but you're a lady, you're too fragile to take him on."

"Mr Archibald, please –"

"But I can."

"I –"

"I can."

"_Nate_!" Blair summoned all that was still left in her lungs after stuttering at him and being virtually eviscerated by Chuck's baseless kisses. "Mr Bass only kissed me in the hope of drawing you out! I've been a chip in your game against him all day, a pawn, and yet no amount of chairs or lemonade can prove an attraction between two people. Ch – Mr Bass believes that there is something between us, and he was trying to help it along."

Silence.

"I hope you're amenable."

Nothing.

"Nate, say something. Please."

The sound of his name was enough to bring Nate to, though his jaw was still set like a trap. "Forgive me," he entreated, turning his clear gaze to fixate upon Blair and particularly upon the swell of her swollen mouth. "For not making my intentions clear. I do like you…Blair. I would enjoy spending more time with you."

"We could go bicycling again," she suggested.

"Yes."

"I'd like that."

"So would I."

They walked back up the beach side by side, their shoulders inches apart, palms loose and open but not touching. Blair's fingers closed reflexively, but what she sought was no longer there.

It had left shortly after declaring Nate Archibald the better option.

* * *

><p><strong><em>A couple of people have informed me that the way Chuck's going about letting go doesn't really make sense. It'll probably make even less sense now, but the take home message is this - people in love are always blind, often stupid, and having Blair Waldorf in a bathing suit is no help to anyone.<br>Thanks to:_ ****Eternally Romantic, ElianaDarkheart, Laura, Sophie LeBeau, Krazy4Spike, fanny, abelard, SaturnineSunshine, flipped, L, Agent Twinkle Toes, aliceeeebeth, Nikki999, Chairforeverandlove, That Pam, 29cmk, Maudie _and_ Sofia. N.**


	14. Bad To The Bone

**13. Bad To The Bone**

_In Florida, Mrs Bass is called  
>The fairest of them all;<br>Yet Miss Waldorf's waist remains  
>The smallest of the small.<em>

_You know you love me._

"Is that true, though?"

Blair had plunged her head backwards into the warm water, rinsing her hair but keeping her ears above the surface. "No," she replied. "But the moment Asher prints it, people will remember me as the girl at the second Mrs Astor's gala around whose waist one could wrap one's hand and touch their own fingertips."

"They could touch their own knuckles at the opera opening."

A sigh rose to mingle with the clouds of steam above the bathtub. "I remember that night. I was trying to make Chuck jealous."

"What's that I hear?" Serena tried to tease, but her brow serious as she batted away a wavelet with one hand. "Has something happened between the two of you? Chuck's name has graced your lips with alarming frequency over the past few days."

"_Me_?" Blair sat up and sent the wavelet back, splashing her friend and causing her to splutter. "You've been like a songbird these past few days, all atwitter about Dan Humphrey. What has he promised you?"

"A life of adventure?"

"Does that come with financial security?"

"Blair."

"A comfortable home?"

"B."

"Somebody suitable to lace you up after the two of you have finished?"

"Blair! You're shameless!"

The accused merely blinked. "I'm only asking, S." Her innocence and serenity were palpable; then came the commandment. "But don't you dare go getting yourself into the mess I have. You're a diamond beyond compare, he has to purchase you outright before he even thinks about wearing you or having you reset."

This time, the sigh came from Serena. "He doesn't believe that women are commodities to be bought or sold or that we're useless. He says spending time with the two of us and seeing what his sister has become has led him to realise how wrong he was about the _beau monde_ and how it's the last thing he should be writing about. He wants to travel the world, and he wants to take me with him."

"And when the natives salt you for the cooking pot?"

"Then we'll boil together."

In spite of her illustrious pedigree and rigorous training, Blair made a retching sound. "Long may it last. In my experience, in a few weeks' time it'll be him you want in the cooking pot. Alone."

"And your experience brings us neatly back to Chuck."

Blair appeared captivated by a freckle on her forearm.

"What happened?"

"Nothing. Nothing at all."

"Except you're making that face – your 'I have a secret which is liable to destroy everything if it gets out' face, since your secrets are always of that nature – and why else would Jenny suddenly decide she wanted a day alone with the ladies? Divide and conquer." Serena stated Blair's maxim without a hint of humour. "She's caught the scent of something starting up again and wants you as far away from each other as possible so he can't spring to your defence when she takes up arms."

"So many metaphors, S." Blair was still studying her freckle as if it were a carbuncle of enormous size. "Do you even understand all of them?"

"I am not as stupid as I look. You, however, are certainly not as smart as your stack of novels and wise words suggest."

Their world revolved around appearances, this world Dan Humphrey no longer wanted any part of. Petite waists, wrists and ankles were considered perfection while skirts had to be huge, overflowing settees, steps and carriages. Serena's loveliness gave the impression it was all she had to offer, while the dark foil Blair provided indicated a level of intelligence that only sometimes did she possess. If she'd been more intelligent, her mouth wouldn't still be on fire. Her skin wouldn't feel branded. Her heart wouldn't throb like it had for days after the first time he'd kissed her, after her first sip of whisky, pounding and pounding until her chest actually hurt. There wouldn't be a churning in her stomach like the release of canaries or butterflies at one of the more opulent balls, fluttering about and reluctant to make for the sky. The thought of seeing him again, of _knowing_ she would see him again made her hot and cold and contorted her insides, dividing Blair as to whether she ever wanted to be near Chuck again, whether she hated him or still loved him and how sweet, considerate Nate fitted into all of this. Jenny was a speck on the horizon, a ship moored far away from this, a bizarrely safe harbour of denial and self-flagellation.

Now who was using excessive metaphors?

"I don't need your protection from Jenny Humphrey." A globule of soap froth began to slide down Blair's temple, but she wiped it away before it could reach her eye. "Nor Chuck's."

"You haven't answered my question!" Serena persisted. "What did you do to make her suspicious in the first place?"

Declining to respond, Blair submerged her entire head, hiding her expression beneath a veil of foam. Serena, disgruntled and not a little smug, wrapped herself in a towel and left her dearest friend to marinate.

At the worst of times, Serena glowed silently, a natural product of her golden hair, her vivid gaze, her vivaciousness and lust for all the diverting things in life, fine or base, anything and everything that could entertain her. Now, bathed in love and the rays of the Florida sun, she looked as if she'd been gilded, glossed, polished to a high shine. Her laughter rang out as she brushed her hair while Blair blew surly bubbles until the water went cold. They couldn't have been less alike as they set out for a day of yet more leisure, a song murmured beneath Serena's breath while Blair made the occasional huffing sound and sucked in her ribs for that paradigm of posture: the tiniest waist in Florida. Ivy pulled until her fingers were striped red and white.

"How will you breathe, ma'am?"

"People above a certain level of income don't need to breathe, Ivy," Serena told her wryly. "And our dear Miss Waldorf is one of these."

"I have no – income," Blair snarled, with a gasp as punctuation.

"Your money makes you money."

"Your tongue makes you irritating."

"Your waist doesn't make you the better woman."

"Miss Waldorf makes Miss Waldorf the better woman," Ivy spoke up loyally, and received a rare smile before the dark brow puckered and Blair glared at Serena.

"Does your newfound love for the brother include loyalty to the sister?"

"Of course not!"

"Then stop judging and order up some fresh flowers."

"I'll see to that, Miss Waldorf." Ivy glided away and Serena took her place behind Blair. Her slender hands smoothed over the pale shoulders, the fragile bones. She wrapped her arms tightly around the willowy torso and squeezed.

"Are you frightened of what happened with Chuck?"

"Yes," Blair admitted. "I am very frightened of what happened with Chuck." Even she, still stewing inside, could see the change that Dan had wrought in Serena. Her dear friend glittered when she was happy, when she had love; it was with a mix of sadness and joy that Blair realised they would never had what she and Chuck had. He was frightening to be around sometimes, simply because he could glance her way, say nothing and still chase the blood through her veins. She kept trying to focus on the his insults, his condescension but, as she ever had, she focused on the kiss. It made her fizz like fat in a fire, volatile and not caring whom she might burn.

Dan and Serena would kiss and glow and make one another happy, and their passion would be the storybook kind, while Blair's romance was a blank page…there had been no marriage, no child, and now there were no words for it.

There were no words for what she strove to feel for Nate either, the flickers of something that needed to roar and hiss if it wanted to be heard.

The humidity had broken, although it still didn't feel as early in the year as it was. In two minds as to whether she was dressing to impress or not, Blair extracted a gown from the depths of her trunk and summoned Ivy to do something about its wrinkled frills. The colour was sea foam, as pale as mint green but with a little more blue to it. A matching ribbon had been packed in tissue alongside, lightly scented with Blair's new perfume. The other, the one from another life was safe at the very bottom of the trunk, wrapped in the flimsiest of underthings, the bright gleam of its blue glass obscured.

Scent filled the air as the ribbon was unwrapped and threaded into Blair's hat, pulling its floppy sides down and forming a neat bow just below her left ear. Jenny wore her bow directly below her chin when she deigned to wear a hat at all, so Blair refused to.

"Are you dressing for someone?"

"Yes," replied Blair sardonically. "Jenny. I'm head-over-heels in love with her."

"B!"

"Oh, don't be so scandalised. You and I both have had enough drunken pecks from Kati and Iz to know that these things do happen and are quickly swept beneath the rug. That's why marriages are so important to our kind: she has her perversions, and he has his."

"What's yours?" Serena asked gently, disentangling the diamond teardrop in her ear from a strand of hair.

"Isn't it obvious?"

"Chuck –"

"Is a perversion in and of himself."

"So being married to him would be having your cake and eating it."

As if it were a betrothal diamond, Blair turned her ruby clockwise on her finger and back again. "Don't talk of weddings to me," she said finally, in a queer sort of voice. "Now get dressed, that apricot ruched thing on the bed would look well on a day like today."

"It's tangerine, not apricot."

"I don't care."

_**~#~**_

Jenny didn't snore.

Even when she lay on her back, she didn't snore.

That was the only area, Chuck observed as he looked down upon her sleeping figure, wondering whether to wake her or not, in which she was preferential to Blair. He had passed back and forth from the dressing room and the uncomfortable couch to the bathroom several times, rubbing his scruffy chin and pulling on the lilac skin of his eyelids.

The official reason for a sojourn in Palm Beach had been to fish, but Chuck had been quite surprised when Nate Archibald had called him out on it and requested his presence that morning for fishing, a mere few hours after the sun had risen. It hung in the sky, watery yellow, unwilling to show its radiant face when so few notables were awake to see it. These were servants' hours, a maid scuttling about the sitting room of the suite and setting things to rights, even sneaking into the bedroom to polish the dais upon which the bed was raised. Chuck, uncomfortable with comfort and being waited upon, didn't move until she'd flung open the French doors and left. A valet was unnecessary but he still dressed simply, buttoning himself neatly and knotting his cravat close to his throat. He was wild in the mirror, hair a haze atop his head and spars of stubble forcing their way through the skin of his cheeks and jaw. His eyes were black in shadow, gold in profile where the light forced its way in, contracting the pupil and provoking the iris.

Male beauty was something Chuck was sure he'd never possess, and that fact didn't bother him. He didn't have the slick prettiness of so many young men his age, the slenderness and long lashes and full lips. He was broad through the shoulders, broad across the back, the opposite of his father in both colouring and appetite. Chuck withered when his bed was cold, as he was withering now…even if the somebody he longed for to warm his nights and days did occasionally snore.

_Waldorf Mansion, Fifth Avenue  
>1899<em>

_She was finally asleep, sprawled in the most inconvenient position imaginable, the scent of port wine lingering on her breath. Each inspiration was slow, but every now and then she'd twitch and snort and snuffle, and Chuck would think of a piglet and laugh and chastise himself, just as Blair would if she were awake. Laughter came as easily now as air, quietly, stirring the fairest tendrils of her hair._

_Chuck Bass, who it was rumoured had bedposts of solid gold and black silk sheets – untrue – had made love in a gardener's bed and couldn't fault the experience. Blair was the great leveller, her arms and her neck and her waist the greatest arguments for egalitarianism he'd ever come across He could live with her and mate with her in this bed that smelt of earth and fading delight, he could lie at the back of her greenhouse forever and give up exclusive hotels and expensive carriages._

_She'd never stand for it, of course. She had to be the mistress of the finest house on Fifth with elegant portraits instead of plant pots adorning the walls._

_He'd do it. For her, he'd curl up like a domesticated cat and keep the tiger inside for playtime. He'd make small talk. He'd close old wounds._

_And he'd never, never tell anyone she snored._

Nate was waiting at the edge of a large manmade lake in the hotel grounds. Being the best that the state had to offer, it catered to its guests' every whim; therefore there was a lake, and it was well stocked, and rods were available upon request. Nate was dressed in blue, all tucked and pressed and harmonious with the backdrop. For not the first time, Chuck considered him as a suitor for Blair: he was rich enough, handsome enough. He _was_ pretty, but angled, sharp enough not to be feminine. His suit fitted him well, and his hands were nimble on the fishing pole, but what of care? Chuck accepted a rod from Nate's nameless valet, but his brain was whirring. If Blair married Nate, he would have to learn her from scratch, and there would be things he'd miss out on through impatience and eagerness. Would he notice the birthmark on her back, the colour of a dried coffee stain, revise its position until he could find it with fingertips alone? Who would remember her collarbone but Chuck, who else would mark the delicate nubs of bone at the centre of her throat? Such knowledge couldn't be taught, not to this Vanderbilt who hadn't spent his life spying from curtained alcoves, watching her mature and her silky hair rise from braids on each shoulder to elaborate coiffures, studded with flowers and gems and smelling of Dorota's lavender soap.

Such slavishness couldn't be taught.

Such adoration, and such agony resulting from that adoration.

"Archibald," Chuck greeted him jovially, rubbing his chin as he had been all morning. "I'm told this lake is thick with fish."

"I didn't have you down as a fisherman," Nate replied, altering his stance to aim at the deepest part of the water. "You modern men seem like the kind to delegate someone to do that for them."

"You invited me."

"But you came."

"We hunt, and make no mistake – we eat what we catch."

"Does that include ladies?"

"It's a poor fisherman indeed who needs a rod and a lure to attract a lady." Chuck rolled the pole between his palms as Nate cast again. "Though I suppose some have a Dutch name and an American fortune in lieu of lures and rods."

"Come now, Mr Bass." The smile of the guest with the proudest of all Dutch names almost gleamed in the dawn light. "I'm not the one with an American fortune. First your father with steel and railroads, now you with your oil. And your wife was in copper, I believe." He gave a low chuckle.

"Do you doubt my wife's life story?"

"I doubt you would have invented one so you could have her."

And oh so carefully, Nate began his descent beneath the surface of what was decent.

"Since as far as I can see, your head is full of Blair."

Her forbidden first name in another man's, another suitor's mouth made Chuck hoarse. "_Blair_?"

"Embracing publically is one thing. A married man and an unmarried woman of unmarred character caught in a clinch is quite another. You're lucky I was the only one to see, and luckier still that she persuaded me you hadn't forced yourself upon her."

"Because modern men do that, do we?"

Nate's look became genuinely regretful as he realised what he'd insinuated. "Because modern money can't hush every whisper. The two of you, only a few months ago, closer than was proper at balls and in my cousin's garden, under the protection of this Gamesome Gallant who placed a bet on your marriage the first time you were seen together."

"Asher Hornsby means nothing to me."

"Yet you know his name, and Blair counts him as her friend."

Chuck's knuckles were white as he cast. "You don't know what you're talking about. The Gamesome Gallant doesn't know what he's talking about. If anything, Miss Waldorf and I are…old acquaintances."

"Mere acquaintances don't use entendre at the breakfast table – I'm not blind, you know, and nor am I stupid." Nate was passionate, his companion as cold as the lake inside. "Though your wife must be, not to see how you are around each other. She quickens, Blair, like a bloodhound when you're around. She pulls at the leash, even though she's the only reining herself in. She'd take you down and have you if she could."

"You don't know what you're talking about," Chuck repeated, disguising his uncertainty by fiddling with the spool.

"Do you want her?"

"That's irrelevant."

"If you want her, then man up and tell her, because I want her!"

And there it was. Blair's salvation, Chuck's redemption, served on a silver platter. He closed his eyes. "I hope the fashion plate exterior hasn't fooled you," he warned. "I've never found anybody less like the model of a woman. If you agree with everything she says, you're wrong – she needs to be challenged, but not so often that it becomes boring. If you don't agree, you're also wrong – she has good sense for a person who spends so much money on fans and gloves. If she doesn't learn to love you, she won't pretend – her mind tells her she could be a society wife, but she only lies when it suits her purposes. She'd never pretend to make you happy. She'd never pretend to make anyone but herself happy."

"You make her sound selfish."

"She is and she isn't."

"Is and isn't is a contradiction."

"And so is Blair. Selfish for self-preservation, sweet to draw others to her side and turn them into acolytes. Sweet again to those she values. She strikes so quickly that you wouldn't know your throat had been cut until you were already dead. Don't mention her father until she does, and never mention her mother. If she ever cries, she will slap at you and want you to go away. If you do leave, you're an even bigger fool than you seem, Nathaniel Archibald." Chuck ignored a tug on his fishing line and continued, still impassive, "The biggest fool of all would hurt her, he who would shut her up or lay a hand on her. My 'manning up', as you put it, would involve putting bullets into whichever parts of his body and in what order she chose."

"So…" Nate was staring at Chuck's twitching line. "You're not going to tell her."

"I'm a married man."

"So…"

"So no, Nathaniel."

The pain behind Chuck's sternum became acute as Nate let out a gusty sigh and then beamed, as if he himself had been relieved of an ache. "You'll catch another," he said easily. Everything would go easily for him now. "Like that one on the end of your line."

"Its face won't be as lovely," Chuck ground out, and Nate laughed as the invisible thread that it was fancied ran heart to heart across Palm Beach, from past to present to a possible future, tautened and snapped.

He hoped such adoration could be learned.

He hoped the tender point between her first and second toes wouldn't be forgotten – but that wasn't Chuck's business any longer.

_**~#~**_

"We," hissed Blair. "Are in a _church_."

And so they were.

"She requested time alone with the ladies," Serena snapped back. "How was I to know she meant the Virgin Mother too?"

Jenny had met them at the base of the elevator bank, the elaborate scrolls of the doors providing a holy icon-like background for her black lace mantilla. The Spanish veil was flung back from her bronzed face, and she'd forgone blackening her lashes or eyebrows, allegedly for piety's sake. Blair defiantly yanked her bow off to one side, and Serena smoothed down her skirt. They had been informed – in the hushed tones of one conveying news of a death – that 'time alone with the ladies' meant time without male temptation to cleanse their souls and confess their sins to God. Since Blair preferred keeping her sins to herself and Serena itched with boredom every time she had to get on her knees and rejoice about doing so, they sent up for Ivy who, sensing the mood, was cheerfully irreverent as the exited the lobby. When even her good humour had been exhausted, she crept along behind Jenny, who'd announced they would walk to the church as pilgrims walked.

"The Lord Jesus rode a donkey," was Ivy's quick response, and the mantilla fluttered angrily in its wearer's wake.

Everything in Florida was a little too bright, a little too fresh and a little too new. Garishly painted saints peered down from high alcoves, their halos bright gold. In the space before the altar, the red carpet ran to left and right: to the vestry, and to a row of confessionals which stood back-to-back, denying the worshippers any chance of privacy. The mesh screens parting the sinner and the priest were worryingly translucent; this was not a town with secrets. The wealthy had secrets because the wealthy didn't come to church, and when they were not fishing or visiting, the rumour mill received grist from the cookhouses and chapels of Palm Beach.

"Shall we each take a box?" Jenny asked brightly, too brightly, as if they were at the opera and the show were about to begin. A blue velvet curtain was drawn on the opposite side of the confessional she entered, indicating a ready listener.

Blair took the next box along and spoke not a word. Her priest was absent.

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned."

"What is your sin, my child?"

"I profess the sin of lust, Father. The sin of pride. The sin of…appetite."

"Of gluttony, my child?"

"Of greed, Father."

In the third box, Serena bit her tongue and braced her hand against the wall of Blair's confessional.

"Do go on."

Blair could imagine Jenny's eyes gleaming in the dark, sapphires in a coal mine. She fingered the bracelet on her left wrist, exquisite emerald frogs.

"I lust for my husband," Chuck's wife declared, pronouncing each syllable with care and clarity. "I wish the days shorter and the nights longer, that I might spend more time in his arms. It shocks my soul to say so, but I think that when we lie together in conjugal bliss, I sometimes see the Lord. When we talk of what we've done together, Father, I feel pride, pride in my power over him, my wifely power of fulfilling his needs. My greed for more triggers more lust, more felicity, more pride."

"These are indeed sins." The unseen priest sounded more amused than grave. "Sins of the flesh are still sins, my child, even when committed within the confines of the marriage bed."

"That I know, Father."

"In allowing these sins, your husband does not exercise his God given supremacy over your sex."

"He doesn't."

"First you must say ten Hail Marys and pray to the humble Virgin, and then your punishment is that suited to all prideful women: to lie beneath your husband and fulfil his needs in any way you can, but to take no pleasure for yourself. The ultimate end is a child, is it not?"

"Of course, Father. We try and we pray for it all the time."

"Then go in peace, and reflect upon what we have discussed. I bless you in the name of the Father…"

But Blair had banged open the door of her confessional even as the prayer began and stood trembling at its end, waves running up and down her sea foam gown and even the ribbon on her hat trembling. Both Ivy and Serena stepped to her sides as Jenny glided from the box, her veil down before her face like a bride's.

"What," inquired Blair calmly, for all she was shaking like an enraged leaf. "Was that disgusting display supposed to prove?"

"I didn't miss everything on the beach," answered Jenny with equal equanimity. "Chuck Bass running about and playing your lapdog, Chuck Bass' lapdog slavering at your feet because even he loves you." She stepped closer and Blair didn't move, squaring up to the fine Brussels lace and hating the self-satisfied expression behind it. Her fingers burned, but she'd never put the boxing skills learnt in one comical afternoon with a young gentleman to use, and she didn't plan to begin in this cheap and cheerful house of the Lord.

Besides, she valued her pretty hands.

Jenny went on, "I want you to know that he and I are together, as man and wife, whether that affects you or not. For my part, I believe you value your head over your heart. You wouldn't risk loving him, rocking our social boat and yours. You wouldn't, would you?"

"No."

"Good girl."

"Meaning no, it doesn't affect me." Two palms pressed themselves against Blair's, at once warning and supporting her. If God's representative on earth was staying silent, she could safely assume that her next move wouldn't bother him in the slightest. "It doesn't affect me, Jenny, because I know it's not true. I blame myself for your living in a world where everything that came to you was a castoff, something of mine that I passed on. I blame myself for your carrying that through into your marriage, although I don't remember wrapping your husband up in tissue and sending him up to the attic for you. I do not, however, blame myself for your lies." The deep brown gaze, at times so innocent, was narrowed into snakelike slits as Blair prepared to spit venom. "Everyone knows that it would take more than the Holy Ghost to resurrect _any_ part of your husband from the dead, and even the spirit of Jesus Christ getting inside him wouldn't get him inside _you_."

The light dress flickered and swirled as Blair thrust herself back and turned down the aisle, heels banging even through the thick carpet. Serena swiftly followed. Ivy paused before the mantilla and its occupant.

"In other words," she added. "She doesn't care either way, but she knows you're not fucking and pretending you are in a church is just bad manners." The head went down, the knees bent and Ivy swept a glorious curtsey. "Good afternoon, Mrs Bass."

* * *

><p><strong><em>My humblest apologies for the long wait<em>**_** for this chapter - I've had some assessments to do for uni as well as a lot of illness in the family, so thank you so much everyone who waits patiently, asks politely or even just leaves me to it when real life interferes. To those of you who've sworn at me and the like in the hope of getting me to post this chapter...are you mad? The last thing you should do if you want a chapter update is to piss the author off! I frown sternly upon the lot of you.  
>There have been a lot of new alerts for this fic over the last month - won't you say hello, lurkers? Thanks to:<strong>_** abelard, Stella, thegoodgossipgirl, teddy bear, SaturnineSunshine, L, Sofia. N, Nikki999, fiona249, That Pam, Eternally Romantic, Stephycats7785 _and_ lovetvtomuchxo. _This chapter is also dedicated to _Stephycats7785_, a wonderful f__an who ploughs on through my metaphors and worryingly flowery language even through illness.  
><em>**


	15. Amo, Amas, Amat

**14. Amo, Amas, Amat**

"'Man's natural character is to imitate: that of the sensitive man is to resemble as closely as possible the person whom he loves.'"

"Who wrote that?" Jenny, who'd been lounging by the open window of the parlour with her gaze fixed predatorily upon Nate, raised her head. Gold wire roses studded the hair above her brow. "Shakespeare? Chaucer? The charming Mr Hornsby?"

"It's the Marquis de Sade," Chuck answered her. Blair didn't have to glance up from her page to know that Jenny was watching Nate and that Nate and Chuck were watching her; she felt it like a physical touch, roaming over her now still fingers, and then her downcast eyelids, and then her mouth. It made her feel naked, but she refused to react – outwardly, at least – as he continued, "As twisted an individual as he was, he believed very strongly in the power of love. I doubt he ever had or wanted it, but he saw men in love as capable of anything. He claimed they were incorruptible, truer than any other creatures alive, even faithful dogs."

As if on cue, Monkey let out a short _ruff_.

The party had attended church, and eaten in one of the hotel's formal dining rooms with several other notables. Serena, half-reclining on a damask loveseat patterned with exotic birds, was admiring the baroque style of the room, all white and blue with touches of gilt delineating the panels on the walls. The windows were wide, with nine square panes of glass forming a larger whole, and the air was scented with brine. Jenny was in the window seat, Chuck in the chair beside her but angled towards the room. Nate sat in an identical chair opposite, while Serena took two thirds of three-seater and Dan squashed up at one end and was happy to do so. He was scribbling away in his notebook, smiling every time his companion discreetly prodded him with a toe and pretended she hadn't.

Blair was on the ottoman, looking frankly ridiculous. Her skirt was so huge that it overflowed all four sides of the pouffe, pink and white silk extending in every direction and the buckles at her waist and cuffs reflecting light around the room and dazzling the occasional waiter who came in to refresh their drinks. Without the necessary Sunday hat to hold it in place, her hair had come undone as she read and now snaked down her back. The task of reading aloud had been meant to distract her from fuming about her previous visit to church, and as such her unruly coiffure had gone unnoticed.

_Even the spirit of Jesus Christ getting inside him wouldn't get him inside __you_, she repeated to herself, and choked back a giggle.

"What's so amusing, B?"

"God's mysterious ways."

"Meaning?"

"Lazarus." Blair caught her friend's eye, and Serena's lips compressed at the joke. _Even the spirit of Jesus Christ getting inside him wouldn't get him inside you_.

"And yet today's gospel was about the temptation of Christ." A freshly lit cigarette was clamped between Chuck's teeth, and he was speaking around it with apparent ease, looking at no one and ignoring the room at large. "Forty days and nights in the wilderness, tempted beyond all reason and refusing to give in. No wonder Satan himself appeared, perhaps he was no longer content to delegate."

"It sounded to me as if he were present for the whole argument," Blair interjected. "Though I doubt their being in the same locality had any effect on Jesus."

"I'm sure his actually being there had no effect whatsoever."

"Of course not! No stones were made into bread and there was no jumping off any temples."

Jenny spoke up, her tone acerbic. "I'll jump off a temple if this spiritual talk carries on much longer." She toyed with the collar of emeralds around her neck, the stones pointing downwards like sharp teeth.

But Blair was equally sharp. "And yet, Mrs Bass, you seemed so very spiritual when you took Serena and I with you to confession. You confessed your sins and were absolved so sweetly – I do hope you haven't lost your faith." The taste of salt on her tongue was close to fearful, anxious about how tightly Jenny was wound after said church visit…and yet she couldn't stop her tongue from moving, from sparring with the husband and provoking the wife. Blair had taunted Chuck at croquet and told him she wouldn't let him let her go, then preferred Nate's caretaking to his at the beach, though it was she who ran after him later on. She still liked to kiss him, she still liked to be kissed. She pushed him away and pulled him back to her, and he tried to let her go no matter what she did.

The Marquis de Sade had claimed men in love were truer than any other creatures alive.

"Church," declared Dan, and everybody stared at him. "That is to say…"

Serena sat properly upright, pressing her bare arm against his shirt sleeve and smiling. The golden brown puffs at her shoulders harmonised perfectly with her bright hair. "We're getting married," was her announcement, quiet and full of pride. "When we return to the city, and then Dan and I are going to travel the world together."

No one quite knew what to say after that, so Blair took the initiative and zoomed over to the three-seater on her ottoman. She reached for Serena's left hand, found no ring but still clung, her upturned face shining as if she were a child who'd been given a gift. Blair prided herself on shining on demand, and the occasion called for it even if the suitor was utterly unsuitable. "Serena," she cooed, as brides love to be cooed at. "I'm so happy for you. Congratulations. Daniel –" She rose from the pouffe to embrace him, startling the already anxious author, and whispered, "I will run you through, Humphrey, I will find a sword and run you through. I will cut off your male parts while you still live and serve them for dinner. I will cover you in luncheon meat and purchase a pack of starving dogs to chase you, should a single teardrop fall from her eye, should there be a single bump or bruise that she can't explain. When she falls pregnant –" And Blair's voice trembled a little, though Dan couldn't have known why. "I don't care where you are in the world, you will come home and give her back to me, and we'll take care of her together. Your children are my godchildren, you have no choice. What's yours is now mine."

Since it seemed the safest course of action, Dan patted her gently between the shoulder blades. "Thank you for sharing."

Whether that meant words or woman, Blair wasn't sure.

"This should've been you." A whisper from Serena as Blair hugged her tightly and Jenny unfolded herself to congratulate her brother.

"No. I don't think anyone in the world deserves to be happy until you've had the best of it first."

Tears leaked from the corner of two pairs of eyes, for no matter how they tried to deny it, they were being separated in the most absolute way. Even if the new Mrs Humphrey had wanted a house in the city, she would have the occupations of a married woman that Miss Waldorf did not. Maybe it was better that Serena went forth and explored the world beyond New York, but it felt to Blair as if a book she hadn't quite finished reading had been returned to the shelf without her even knowing it was to be taken away.

Silly, of course.

Nate moved to Blair's side and grazed her forehead very lightly with his fingers. "I believe this is my cue to ask you to have dinner with me. I've been meaning to, but I…" He stuttered as she regarded him gravely, gaze soft and pink from crying. "Now Mr Humphrey and Miss van der Woodsen are spoken for, we can give tonight over to the celebration of new beginnings."

"How lovely!" Serena exclaimed. "Then we can start on the wedding details tomorrow."

Blair's focus was entirely upon Nate, and she spoke only to him. "That would be wonderful." He'd just brushed her hairline, and then his hand fell to his side and he was beaming at her.

_If you want her, then man up and tell her, because I want her_!

Nate's opening gambit was a blinder, and it had struck Chuck blind. He'd manned up, he'd swept in, and he hadn't let the tears dry on the cheeks of the girl he wanted before telling her so. Their silhouettes in the sunshine were exquisite, her chin tilted upwards and his down as they observed one another, began the long process of learning what this or that expression meant and what it felt like to stand beside each other. It should've been them up there, he and Blair, standing tall and together. She might yet get that, and he had helped it to happen. He had stepped aside and caught fish and not roared his feelings unto the room so somebody, so _she_ would tell him what to do.

"Scotch," he mumbled to a passing waiter as the company began to chatter and coo over the happy couple. "No ice, no mint, no fucking Florida flourishes. And bring the bottle with you."

Monkey flumped down across Chuck's feet and whined.

_**~#~**_

"Am I to be the last man standing?"

They were strolling down the avenue where Dan and Blair had previously promenaded, sun bathing their skins like the Midas touch. Serena had pulled the ribbon from her hair, and it flowed out in a long blonde stream behind her. She laughed at Nate's almost wounded air.

"Girls chase after you wherever you go, and you chase them back when it suits you."

"But we were old bachelors together," he protested, slinging an arm around her waist and affecting a swagger. She laughed all the louder. "Others were defeated by love and marriage, but never you and I. I can't comprehend the fact that cigar smoking –"

"Hashish sampling –"

"Race running –"

"Nude swimming Serena Celia van der Woodsen is to be married." That young lady broke away from her cousin and drew herself up to her full height. "And to a Humphrey of Brooklyn, a writer of novels, a seer of sights and a teller of stories. He means to write one about Blair, you know," she added slyly. "One day, when we're back from our travels, if she deigns to let him."

"A fascinating subject."

"Nate."

"What?"

They paused, and rested their vivid blue eyes upon each other.

"You know, don't you?"

It was Nate's turn to laugh, though his rang a little bitter. "You don't need to know. It hangs in the air, like there are electric wires crossing back and forth across the room." He pressed a palm to his damp forehead. "It makes everything so much more difficult, that's she's so fascinating – that you're fascinated by her, and he's fascinated by her, and even Daniel Humphrey…I can't read her, Serena," came the final, frank confession. "I play to her and she plays back, but whenever I try to go deeper, she blinks at me as if she would hide the truth, as if it isn't my right to look at her for more than a few moments."

"Blair is Blair, you mustn't take on so." Serena plucked an imaginary speck of lint from his jacket. "She's a New York girl, Nate, and you don't like New York. You run away from how cryptic society is instead of being intrigued by it, and Blair intrigues you. She's agreed to have dinner with you. She's giving you a chance."

"She kissed him."

"He kisses a lot of people."

"Does she?"

"Blair is Blair," Serena repeated. "And Blair and Chuck are Blair and Chuck, and I wouldn't talk about him to her if I were you. There is nothing between them anymore, despite appearances. There are remnants of magnetism, remnants of currents only because he played, and she played back. Then they hurt one another too deeply to disconnect. He's better off with Jenny, and she's better off with you. Or –" And her tone became light-hearted once again. "With another amiable gentleman, if you're found wanting."

"And if I hurt Blair?"

"You won't."

"You would murder me if I did."

"But you won't."

_What if he was meant for the conservatory_? _What if he would be stuffy and cramped and miss the flowers when he was in the attic_? _Then she'd feel terrible for dragging him to a place he hated, for making him stay just because he loved her_.

Chuck stared right through the vase on the table with a gaze glazed over, with wrist limp but grasp tight around a tumbler. He drank regularly, every minute and a half or so, becoming duller and sharper at the same time. There was no fire in Jenny's dressing room, no one had expected him to be here. Memories brought colour to his cheeks as if he were a small child, but the remainder was grey, flat, numb. His heart didn't seem to be beating very hard, and his thoughts moved slowly: if he were dying, it would be more painful, so he wasn't dying. If he wasn't dying, he must be drunk. Why was he drunk?

The glass was drained in answer to that question.

He would focus on her words but ignore her name, and that would soothe him. She could be nothing more than a watery recollection, albeit a recollection whose neatly manicured fingernails clawed at his innards and tore chunks out of his resolve.

_Maybe she wasn't light. Maybe she was flawed and wicked inside_.

"What are you doing?"

Who spoke? Floor beneath his cheek, spinning. Room spinning. World spinning. Skirts puffing out and spinning in a dance, dancing, _care to dance with a poor devil_?

"Princess," he murmured, and realised his mistake.

"Did you just…oh. That's not me, is it?" Her voice made him spin faster, Saint Catherine on her wheel, spikes in his head.

"Jen," he managed.

"This is because of her, isn't it?"

"Jen-ny. Humphrey."

"Bass. You need some water. I can't have the maids seeing you in this state."

"No." Chuck shook his head, then pressed his face into the gorgeous Turkey carpet and raked it across the rough edging fibres. "No."

"Pathetic," she spat as she stalked past him, slamming the door as hard as she could behind her. "All for her! All pathetic!"

Dying would indubitably be less painful.

_**~#~**_

"What if he wants me to drink soda?"

Ivy stifled a giggle. "I'm certain Mr Archibald knows that you're Miss Waldorf, and Miss Waldorf doesn't drink cola or go out in the pouring rain."

Blair glared at the cascade of water that appeared to fall in sheets from the sky, no single droplet discernible. "We'll have to dine here," she said listlessly. "Which will mean no rustic details for my next letter to Asher. He might've had champagne and oysters delivered specially, but what good is that? I can order that in the city at any hour of the day or night. I can even send Dorota down to the waterfront to pick the best off the barges."

"Beg pardon," began Ivy delicately. "But you must have accepted Mr Archibald's invitation because you wished to spend time with him. _I_ would like oysters," she declared. "But if they're irrelevant to ladies such as yourself, won't his company suffice?"

"Oysters, I've tried."

"And Mr Archibald you haven't."

"He is something new," Blair agreed, and her small plump mouth formed a moue. She didn't dare eat now in order to showcase a tiny appetite at dinner, her stomach was fluttering so. Why so dismissive, she wondered, when her escort was _the_ Nate Archibald, Nathaniel Fitzwilliam Vanderbilt Archibald?

There was a horrible stretching sensation beneath her navel, and Blair screwed up her face in despair. Naturally _that_ would happen tonight, what might turn into the most important night of her life. All of a sudden, she desperately wanted to lock the door, take to her bed, have Ivy bring her a warming pan and grit her teeth as the cramps which were only now beginning and which would get worse before they ended.

What was the matter with her?

"Ma'am…"

With a sigh, Blair got wearily to her feet. "Get me some pads," she instructed the maid. "I'm going to wash – again – and then I need that gown with the crepe overlay, the one with the striped skirt."

"Yes, ma'am."

_**~#~**_

"Chuck. Chuck!"

Something snapping, right in front of his nose.

"Who…"

"Dan Humphrey, Jenny ordered me to tidy you up before she stormed off. There's some Belgian down at the bar, a prince or an ambassador or a nameless person of substance. Apparently he's a far better use of her time than a lovelorn husband drowning his sorrows in her suite."

"Humphrey," Chuck repeated, slightly more coherently. "I fear I may vomit on you."

"Easy." Both men grunted as Dan gripped Chuck around the waist and levered him off the floor, scraping his chin along the boards. They staggered to one side when the task was accomplished, forcing Dan to grab hold of Chuck by the scruff of the neck and heave as his dead weight lurched stubbornly downwards.

"Before I…I have a question."

"Yes?"

_He looks like an owl_, remarked Dan to himself, taking in the not quite golden irises fixed upon him, the pinpoint pupils, the inquisitive tilt to the head.

"Am I dreaming?" Chuck asked, with the utmost sincerity. "Did I fall asleep in the greenhouse? Am I dreaming now? Did I…"

It could be that he'd suddenly realised to whom he spoke, to whom Dan reported, that Dan had been brought on this trip to seduce Blair, the Blair who'd reduced him to this, and that had stopped him in his tracks. Dan reflected with pity upon his own Henry, the bold, brash playboy who'd fallen for Diana's reckless naivete and who'd been lost to the scheming Penelope, to her jet beading and neatly trimmed fringe. Was this only now occurring to Chuck, that there was no one around him he could trust? That he couldn't trust himself? Would he have confessed something to Dan if it hadn't, explained the past, begged a favour?

But that wasn't to be and, without any further ado, Chuck kept his promise and vomited all over his brother-in-law's shoes.

_**~#~**_

The knock came sooner than Blair had expected, and she clapped her hands over her belly as if its aching must be hidden. The striped ivory and gold of her skirt fell straight to the floor, misty and beautiful beneath the layer of crepe. Her bare shoulders had been buffed until they nearly shone, there was perfume at her throat and cologne in her hair. The sleeves beginning a little way down her arms had been stitched to look like clusters of baby peonies, and Blair's fingers shook as she added the finishing touch: the simplest necklace in her possession, a string of coral beads. Her earlobes were without adornment; she was sure she needed nothing more, not now that the rain had stopped.

The reflection in the mirror shimmered.

With a solemn air of ceremony, Ivy opened the door.

"How long do you have?" Dan demanded. His presence was by no means imposing, but his impatience and his earnestness gave him an air of being taller, broader as he loomed large in the doorway.

"Half an hour," Blair replied immediately, too surprised to ask him why.

"Come with me."

"But –"

"He mentioned a greenhouse?"

The room reeked. All the windows were open, but the smell was pervasive, bile mixed with alcohol mixed with human and animal. Monkey raised his muzzle when Blair entered, they lowered it back down onto his paws.

"Where…"

"On the bed."

The gauzy curtains had obstructed her view, but as she stepped closer and onto the bed's dais, she recognised his shape. He was clean, at least, in parts of a suit with the cravat and jacket missing, his shoes gone, and he lay curled up like a child, facing away from her. Chuck's foetal figure smelled more of soap and iodine than the air around it, and Blair cast a glance back over her shoulder at Dan.

"He allowed me to clean him up, but only that. He doesn't want anyone."

She didn't speak.

"I believe that to mean he wants you."

A pause of a minute or more, loud in the silent bedroom.

"Go."

He did.

Blair had no cognisance of how best to approach the matter. This wasn't Chuck, so anything he threw at her hadn't come from him. His bellyful of alcohol would do the talking for him, and she would have to school herself not to listen. She eased onto the bed at his side – hoping most sincerely that it wasn't Jenny's side – and spread her gown around her in a glitter of fabric, gilding the sickbed and waiting for the sinner to say his piece. She smoothed her gloves, she smoothed the braids wrapping around her bun at the back. She smoothed down what she felt inside as one would rearrange a coverlet. She didn't dare wonder about the length of his confession.

"Why are you here?"

"Dan brought me."

"Dan brought you." He sounded tired.

"Chuck." Blair's pronunciation was soft, even sugar coating the harsh syllable of his name. "You mustn't behave like this. Dan was most worried about you, and I have no doubt that your wife –"

He rolled over so swiftly that she started, and nearly rolled herself. The eyes looked but did not see, and it made her sad to look back at him. The planes and angles of his face were as familiar as her own, as familiar as a reflection. There had been a time when she could gaze into him and see what she needed to of herself, of his affection for her, of the way his affections were changing into something that might sustain them both forever. She'd realised she was in love one night when they were dancing, waltzing up and down an empty marble hallway where her mother had no power, and the blissful agony was so acute she'd had to stop, excuse herself, plead a headache and go home. She'd lain in her bed and shaken for hours, shaken to know that she was lost for good, and maybe found forever.

And now lost again.

"'Wife' is not a word I ever wish you to use around me."

"I apologise."

"Don't."

"What would you have me do?" Blair inquired tartly, then went on, "Dan brought me here for you."

"I knew you two weren't suited." His tone verged upon gleeful. "When he took you to the dining car, when you played cards and acted common in case it aroused him and you could pretend to be aroused too, and I would be thwarted, since my possessiveness could never come between two people so enthralled with one another. I knew you weren't suited, so he has your Serena and she has him. Who has you?"

"No one has me."

"Not Archibald?"

"No."

The blankness in Chuck's gaze evaporated, became hard. "Are you still having dinner with him?"

"Chuck."

"I'm very tired of trying to foist you off on people, and I would rather like to stop. So I ask you, do you still dine with Archibald this fine even'?" Even his archaic speech had a sardonic cadence, a rhythm of desolation and disgust.

Blair pushed against, then swallowed the saltiness blocking her throat. "Yes."

"Get out."

"Chuck…"

"_Out_."

Like Dan before her, she did, lifting up her sparkling skirts, walking with measured steps away from the bed and the room and the stench of sadness. The door closed with a well oiled _click_, and Blair leaned against the doorframe. She tasted salt once again in the single, discernible tear from her right eye, swiftly wiped away, and in the welling blood where she'd bitten her lip to stop herself saying no, from leaving Nate to wait and from curling up behind him and offering the strength in her slender, carefully polished arms.

_**~#~**_

Dinner was beef, cut so fine it was papery. Nate striped it with the blade of his knife and ate each strip separately, pausing between mouthfuls to share his opinions on the room, the hotel, the state, the weather, his life, hers. Blair leant forward over her plate, toying with her champagne glass and smiling whenever he made a joke without actually showing her teeth. Her potatoes had been cut into quarters and left to go cold, and now and again she poked at the beef without deigning to taste it. Her food had been artfully rearranged, the jus smeared to create the illusion of consumption.

Admittedly, it wasn't the most convincing of illusions.

"Is the meal not to your satisfaction?"

"Lunch," Blair answered, even as her stomach clenched and cramped for a different reason entirely. "I fear I may have overindulged."

"I can't recall seeing you eat more than salad."

"Why, Mr Archibald, were you watching me?"

"The ham and your dress were of the same shade, and I remember wondering if you would have some and match." She chuckled beneath her breath, and he grinned. "But your gown this evening is lovely, insofar as I'm qualified to judge, and I'm glad to have amused you."

"My apologies for not partaking of the ham."

"You're forgiven – if you have dessert, and enjoy it. It's my hope you find this particular dessert very diverting indeed."

At a signal from Nate, which was _not_ the way the best people did it and something he ought to have known not to do, the waiter glided across the floor to remove their plates and exchange their napkins. Going through several of these _was_ something that the best people did, but Blair didn't like to surrender her spotless square of linen and receive another; it seemed such a waste. She'd seen the blisters laundrywomen and even personal maids like Ivy had on their hands from scrubbing, and it gave her an itchy feeling Serena has dubbed 'the guilt of the Gilded Age'.

"What's our dessert?"

Two servers came in this time, each bearing a silver platter topped with a tall glass. Three round balls were inside each frosted receptacle, two brownish and one white. They were set down before the diners and doused with alcohol, a box of discreetly branded matches placed at Nate's elbow.

Blair was intrigued. "I was worried that you were going to order me an ice cream soda."

"Oh, I was," Nate replied, and revelled in her horrified expression. "Unfortunately, the law forbids such things being consumed on a Sunday, so some bright spark came up with this." He struck a match.

"And this is?"

"An ice cream sundae."

As the match head hovered over her dessert, Blair let out a tiny yelp. Blue flames leapt up from the frozen surface, very nearly singeing the hairs on Nate's arm, and her heart raced, both from delight and the shock of it. She applauded him, laughing in surprise as the fire flickered out and the rich scent of cherry brandy wafted all around them. Throwing caution and propriety to the wind, she dug in with her long-handled spoon, as directed by Nate.

"That one is vanilla, and that is honey. The other lump is –"

"A sort of burnt sugar taste," she informed him with her mouth full, now shocked beyond reason at her own behaviour and at the look of approbation she received for it. Nate had a forgiving nature and the forgiving glow of candles behind him, and it lit up his hair like a halo around the edges. He was handsome, of course he was handsome, and fun. Blair didn't know how to be fun, not in the spontaneous way Nate and Serena did it…but Serena would soon be gone, and she didn't know if she could learn how to be fun before her dearest friend was married and gone, off being served up by pygmies and breeding Humphreys. Nate could be the answer. Nate could show her how to be fun, how to not mind that she was forgetting her manners in front of him and behaving in such a ridiculous manner about a dessert. Nate had money and a name and was an easy read, an open page with no fine print.

He was easy, and she wasn't.

He could teach her how to be easy, and then the curtained bed upstairs wouldn't feel like a child she'd abandoned, left hungry, empty. Left to wail alone.

As if it were cherry brandy, Blair's good mood burned away and she pushed back her chair. The still spotless napkin in her lap fell to the crimson carpet. "Forgive me." She bared her teeth when she smiled this time, a full smile that was at odds with the constricting sensation of guilt churned with ice cream. "This dreadful headache has come upon me all of a sudden."

"The ice cream," Nate said knowingly, then bowed his deepest. "My mother won't even touch the stuff."

Blair gave him her hand when he extended his, hers sheathed to the elbow in white silk. They shook as if they were equals, school friends or betting buddies leaving Saratoga for home; then Nate squeezed, bent, impulsively pressed his lips to her palm and lingered a few moments too long for politeness' sake. She couldn't feel the gesture but very much appreciated it, his sweet temper, his chivalry – and above all, the fact that he asked no questions and staked no claim. Warmth blossomed inside her chest. She could stay, she supposed…

"Goodnight, Blair."

Too late.

But too late to be out with a gentleman, in any case.

_Don_'_t let him be there_, Blair prayed as she ascended the stairs to her room, dawdling and refusing the clerk's offer of the elevator. _Don_'_t let Dan be waiting for me, telling me he's worse, that I've made everything worse. __Don_'_t__ let him be better_, she went on uncharitably. _So much better I might have stayed with Nate, eaten ice cream,__ had not a care in the world_. Step after slow step, her heels sank into the rugs and rang out against the floorboards.

"You're late."

It was a miracle that she didn't scream, as she would at a vagrant on her doorstep, or cry out, as she had over the child's trick of fire and ice. He got wearily to his feet, still crumpled, and she retreated against the wall to put some distance between them. A frieze dug into her back, but Blair didn't make a sound. She stared at a Chuck who was less than Chuck and bit the insides of her cheeks, every emotion she'd had that night doubled, tripled, intensified by the scruff on his jawline, the bleak line of his furrowed brows. She had no pity for him, however, not when he leaned into her face and demanded, "Why are you allowed to be happy?"

"I'm not happy," Blair retorted. "You're inebriated and I'm not happy."

"How was dinner with Nathaniel?"

"Faultlessly executed."

"And here I thought it was a date, not a business meeting. Why so curt?"

"Because you're frightening me."

His thumb brushed clumsily again her cheek and he shook his head again, again. "No. No matter how many trysts you have or dinners you don't eat, I won't harm you." Chuck tried to smirk, but it was lopsided, awkward, horrifically honest. His every exhalation was tainted with scotch, but at least he could stand. "You haunt me enough without my having to regret hurting you as well."

"You have hurt me," Blair reminded him. With the best of intentions, her hand closed gently around his wrist.

"_Don't_," he snapped, and she shrank back against the frieze. "Don't…do that."

"Why?"

The grandfather clock at the end of the hallway chimed the hour, and Chuck seemed to be thinking very hard. His head was bent like a bull about to charge, through Blair and through the wall and through the rooms beyond into the ocean. Maybe he would drink that too. Finally, he said, "It would be prudent of you to run away now, Blair, and not look back over your shoulder. I won't follow you if you don't look back at me, but I don't trust myself not to break everything if you do. All the rules, all the promises, all your bones." The tips of his free fingers stuttered over her closed fist, seeking a way in even as he drew away.

"You promised not to hurt me."

"And I've been living inside a sheepskin for so long that I no longer recognise who's prey and who isn't, and I'm too drunk besides." He sighed. "I can chain myself down so I don't bite anyone and I can lie about her and you and I, and do you know what never ceases to amaze me? That my tongue never turns black, because my lies are what's best for us all. That means you can run away to Archibald and he'll get down on one knee for you, and that's what you deserve. You deserve to be happy. I don't know if you know how to, since you've been without happiness for so long, now you've grown out of your tales of pirates and bows in your hair."

"I liked those bows."

"So did I."

They were quiet for some time before Chuck made his move. It took a great deal of concentration but, with deliberate slowness, he lifted the curls from the pale brow and kissed her there. It signified blessing, dismissal. It conveyed gratitude. Its innocence concealed adoration, and it was another sin for the devil on his shoulder to mark down, loving this neighbour more than he had ever been meant to love anyone, except perhaps the faithful dog still scratching for him in his bedroom.

"Run away now," he murmured. "And don't look back at me."

* * *

><p><strong><em>Thanks to: <em>aliceeeebeth, Stella296, abelard, teddy bear, Kate2008, anon, Stephycats7785, Krazy4Spike, L, fiona249, nIGHTSrAVEN47, Glamorous Princess, odyjha, 29cmk, Nikki999, flipped, jojo. 4ever, Silent Reader No More, evieoh, Maribells _and_ anon. _I summoned up my lurkers, and you all rose beautifully to the occasion. Thank you for all your lovely words, and for sticking with me and reading whether you review or not.  
><em>**


	16. Crowning Glory

**15. Crowning Glory**

"Who chooses a pearl over a diamond?"

It was the fifth or so time they'd had that very conversation.

"I love it."

"Of course you do."

Serena stroked the milky orb of her engagement ring fondly. "It's different."

"It's cheap."

"You're in a foul temper this morning."

Blair flung herself backwards onto the sand, then abruptly got back up again. The navy frills of her suit fluttered. Tiny gold specks clung to the underside of both wet arms.

"Do you want to talk?" Serena pressed. "Or…"

"I'm going to swim."

She kicked hard and fast, driving through the surf past a line of ladies clinging to the ropes and bobbing with the current. Their screams were instantly muted when she turned her face to the water, stroke, and back again when she lifted it to breathe, stroke. Blair knew she was swimming further out than anyone, beyond the men and the locals, into places where the sea was no longer clear but murky blue, where there might be sharks, squid, leviathans lurking beneath her. She became fiercer with every stroke, no destination in mind but the distant horizon, no notion of stopping or turning back, her lungs burning and her legs pumping without pause. She gasped every time she surfaced now; a wave broke over her head, filling her mouth with brine.

If she were a shark or a squid, she would never feel like this. She'd found herself unable to sleep after her date with Nate, her encounter with Chuck, and in the days that followed had been as prickly and unyielding as the company had ever seen her. She talked over and around the wedding with Serena but could not get over the strangeness of the ring on her friend's slender finger, the brotherly concern Dan had suddenly adopted for her as the maid of honour. He wanted to know what about him and the marriage was provoking her, Nate enjoyed her enjoyment of simple flaming brandy and wanted to show her more and, no matter how hard or how openly she stared, Chuck apparently couldn't bring himself to look at her, even after everything. After drunken outbursts and drunken commiserations.

After everything.

The water churned behind her.

"Oh, so now you want to –"

It was Nate, hair pasted flat to his forehead, bobbing up and down with confusion lighting up the gentle hue of his eyes. "Who did you think it was?"

"Serena," Blair replied, heart beating in her throat. She ducked beneath the surface to compose herself, pretending she'd been overcome by a wave. Naturally it was Nate, why would Chuck have swum out so far? He was on the beach with Monkey, his only concession to the day being hot and beautiful removing his shoes and rolling up his shirtsleeves – but then at least it _was_ Nate, and not Chuck, since she had no idea what she would say to him but for that opening parley.

She emerged.

"I thought you were Serena," she told him, brushing droplets from her cheeks. "I was rather sharp with her about the wedding a few minutes past."

"What, like you were sharp with her yesterday? The way you behave every time she mentions the wedding?"

"I'm not jealous!"

"I never said you were. But perhaps…" Nate laid his hand flat on the water, and Blair mirrored him. To feel the buoyancy, the push back as if the ocean were willing her to float was an odd thing indeed. "Perhaps you're more upset about my cousin leaving you than you're willing to admit. She won't be gone forever, Blair. She won't even be gone far."

"She'll be on an island somewhere," Blair snapped. "Where polygamy is legal and she's the only blonde of Humphrey's six wives."

He laughed, but swiftly sobered. "You haven't been coming down to dinner."

"I don't feel like dressing and trying."

"You haven't even met the ambassador yet."

"By all accounts –" She ticked off each point. "He's rich, handsome, erudite, a witty conversationalist, a heavy drinker and a lothario for whom the interests of his country come second to wine, women and swimming in the nude." Nate blushed, but Blair's gaze was bald and blank. "It isn't to my pleasure to come down to dinner and make small talk with him."

"It hasn't been your pleasure to come down to dinner every night since our dinner."

Suddenly artless, Blair flushed. She stared at her fingers, pale like white willow twigs. "It's not you, nor the time we spent together. I enjoyed it very much."

"Then what is it?"

"It's the world leaving me behind, Nate! It's the matter of my dearest friend in the world getting married to a man who will never be her equal and promising to cleave to him wherever he will go! It's the matter of having to walk behind Jenny Bass when I was the belle of every ball I attended at home, and it's the matter of Serena becoming her sister, having a new sister to replace me!" Her chest swelled with indignation. "By virtue of being female, my emotions are trapped inside my skin until husband and children arrive and ratify me unto the point where I can unleash them! Until then, I must lie through my teeth and lie about what I feel to suit others, and sending up my card is not enough to honour Prince Damien Dalgaard, the Don Juan of ambassadors! And now," she continued sulkily. "I've gone ahead and thrown my feelings at you anyway. I apologise."

Still treading water, Nate eyed her curiously. "I'm not sure you were meant for this time, Blair Waldorf," he said. "I think you belong sometime in the future, where women rule and men rock babies and cleaving to your husband doesn't mean travelling the world so he can put its wonders into print for the newspapers."

"I shall marry someone who can rock babies and command troops," was Blair's answer. "And we shall be quietly equal where no one can see us."

"Invite me to the ball tonight."

"Beg pardon?"

"You heard me. If you wish to be quietly equal, I won't tell it was you who did the inviting."

"Maybe I don't want to go with you."

"Maybe I'll hold your outburst over your head if that's the case."

Warring with outrage and amusement, Blair clasped her hands. "Will you, Nathaniel Archibald, accompany me to the ambassador's ball which I wasn't planning to attend tonight? I can't imagine what prompted this invitation."

"I will," Nate acquiesced gracefully. "And you should know that you invited me because you enjoyed our time together very much and would like to repeat the experience."

"Is that so?"

And to her utter and complete surprise, he winked.

_Did you think I'd abandoned you all to a life without intrigue? Never! Prince Damien Dalgaard, Ambassador to Belgium is hosting a ball tonight, and our own Miss B will be escorted by Nate Archibald. The couple dined together earlier this week, and it seems the lovely young heir is very much taken with our younger, lovelier heiress. Miss Serena van der Woodsen has a secret to tell, but I am sworn to silence until her return. Why so coy, S? In lieu of something scandalous from those lips, I suppose we'll have to see what the ball has to bring._

_You know you love me._

_**~#~**_

Jenny carefully propped her ankles on the vanity and smiled at her reflected image. Her skirt was a facsimile of a wedding cake, tier upon tier of purple ruffles, but her legs were bare and her thighs glimmered in the low light. She was fascinated by their shapes, by her shape, by the wisps of lace which would be oh so easy for a gentleman to pull apart. Who could be bothered with Archibalds when she had a Bass anyway and a prince eating out of the palm of her hand?

"Purple is your husband's favourite," Elise remembered, blowing out a stub of charred pencil and deftly beginning to sketch her mistress' eyebrows.

"It's the colour of queens." Jenny lay languidly back in her chair and let the masterpiece of her face be filled in, first brows and lashes in black, then mouth in red and cheeks in bronze. She had to shine tonight, as sun-kissed and vividly painted as a heathen goddess. "Do you know," she remarked. "If you'd told me a year ago that I would be here, married to Chuck Bass, attending a prince's ball and being waited upon by a ladies' maid, I wouldn't have believed you. It affirms in my mind what I've always held to be true: that things have their proper place, and the world has an immutable order for getting them there."

"But you were an heiress even before you married Mr Bass, ma'am."

"Yes, from copper smelting." The lie never sat right on Jenny's tongue, no matter how easily it fell from her lips. She wanted them to know where she'd come from, what she'd clawed her way up from. She _needed_ to crow. "But an unmarried girl is valued on how she plays the game. A married woman is prized because she won."

"Mr Bass won't be able to take his eyes from you tonight."

"Mr Bass makes a point of never looking at me, lest he be overcome. I am dressing for the prince, to take my place as his personal guest."

Elise lit up as if she'd been given the compliment, and set the tongs heating for Jenny's hair. It was fashionable to frazzle the fringe here in Florida, where the natives outnumbered the newcomers ten to one and New York fashions were no longer a la mode. It irritated her that her companions didn't seem to care: Chuck was still scruffy too spite her, his hair in need of cutting, preferring the informal tuxedo over proper evening dress and drinking himself to despair in martyred silence. Serena, her soon-to-be sister, tucked a few rosebuds into her coiffure, let a few strands dangle and was perfection without even trying. And Blair…Blair tried. Jenny could see her trying. She knew the hours of preparation that went into smoothing or curling the long brown hair, the kinks it formed when she slept on it wet. She'd been the one to hold the paper beneath Blair's eyelashes and paint dye over the top, such subtle shades that one believed her beauty natural, and not a farce.

Jenny buffed her pearly nails and considered a farce the best way to describe Blair Waldorf. Chuck's face the day he'd agreed to marry her had told her all: she'd clung to him, wrapped herself around him and leeched into his skin. Her virginity was lost twice over, her love once, her dignity never. Certain people had suggested to Jenny that Blair's seclusion after her marriage might mean a baby, but she'd emerged as flat-bellied and hard-faced as ever; Jenny stroked her own stomach, where she was glad to feel organs and machinery rather than a smooth layer of cream and sugar beneath the flesh.

Good.

Getting him to fuck her would be difficult, but she'd get there in the end. She would be plump and contented during pregnancy, and thin and beautiful forever after.

And Chuck would never, ever be able to leave her. Not to return to his oil wells and bury himself in work, not to chase after a ghost of the _beau monde_ in a party frock.

Good.

For now, there was Prince Damien Dalgaard, and a ball.

"I require diamonds," she instructed Elise. "I wish to be dripping with diamonds."

_Waldorf Mansion, Fifth Avenue  
>1897<em>

_Mr Waldorf's death was a triumph and a tragedy for Jennifer Tallulah Humphrey. Since his passing, she'd received two pairs of lace gloves – hardly worn – one of kidskin – never worn – and two black dresses, which would have to be painstakingly altered to make up for the difference in height. Her days were also blissfully free of bother, since she only needed to check in on Miss Waldorf once or twice a day. She had become the perfect mistress and the perfect statue, never changing: she lay in her bed and stared at the wall, and the meals sent up by an anxious cook went cold and congealed until Jenny took them away again._

"_Is there anything you require, Miss Waldorf_?"

"_No_."

"_Very good, miss._"

_In the hours between, Jenny lay on her narrow bed and reverently turned the pages of the fashion papers, or set to work on her new gowns. She knew the doctor had been called, to little effect. Blair had only taken a few mouthfuls of soup before lying back down again._

"_You must eat, Miss Waldorf_."

"_No._"

"_For the good of your health, ma'am._"

"_No_."

_She had got over it, of course she had. There were too many parties and receptions and _'_days at home_'_, as they were quaintly called, to die of grief. When she began to venture out into society again, Jenny sometimes went too, to sit with the maids in the long gallery where they were permitted to gawk at the ladies' gowns._

_Though her mistress had become pale and frail, ugly by some standards, he was always there, hovering inappropriately in the entryway until she arrived. After she was through the doors, wrap in the cloakroom, petticoats blossoming around her and making company at close quarters impossible, he would slip away into the ballroom._

_As if he'd never meant to wait for her at all._

Dan thought he was floating that night, riding a wave first one way across the party and then back the other, always finding his crest at Serena's side. She smiled discreetly at the waistcoat they'd chosen together, a shade of almost imperceptible blue she thought suited him very well in amongst so many bright, brash hues. Her dress was of a similar colour, so close to bridal white that it made his heart race as if he were running, not floating. Even with his new fiancée and new resolution in mind, Dan couldn't help disappearing for a few minutes at a time to scribble in his notebook about the affected expressions of the company surrounding him. When he emerged from behind a colonnade for the third time, he caught sight of his sister.

"How is your princess?" was her opening gambit. "Still content to marry a pauper?"

"Says the Queen of New Money."

"I am a queen tonight, am I not?" She preened, tossed her head in a particular direction and winked at the young man bedecked with medals, who winked back. "The prince himself was kind enough to tell me so. Damien is far too kind to me."

"Or you're finally getting what you deserve."

Jenny dimpled at him, but that hadn't been what he'd meant. He was trying to spy Jenny Humphrey with her handmade shawls and dreams inside Jenny Bass, but there were too many layers of paint between them.

And then there was silence. It came first from those at the foot of the grand staircase, then spread out like ripples in every direction. Heads turned, and the Humphreys' were no exception.

"Well, well," was Dan's wry assessment. "What do you know."

Though Ivy's skills as a liar and manipulator had thus far gone to waste, she was a master dresser. Her fingers just brushing Nate's elbow, Blair glided downwards with her look resolutely forwards, outwards, sweeping over the crowd. Days of sulking in her room and whispered gossip were erased by the spectacle she made: the gown was only just darker than her skin, and fitted like skin nearly all the way to the ground. The bodice and sleeves were encrusted with dozens and dozens of cream and peach coloured pearls, all winking their apology at her dearest friend; Serena laid a hand over her heart.

"It's an English Worth," Jenny hissed.

"Meaning?"

"Ass! It's an English Worth meaning it's a Charles Frederick Worth design of a pattern which never caught on over here, and yet no one is laughing at her! Look at that ridiculous fishtail!"

Satin slippers peeked out from beneath the shimmering hem, which became loose at the knee and fanned out behind Blair in a magnificent fin, row upon row of fabric roses and peonies turning the train from an inconvenience into the marvel of an English garden.

"It's too tight. It looks obscene."

"Goddesses often do."

Jenny's head whipped around, from profile to full confrontation. The scarlet lips peeled back from her teeth like a baited dog. "What in God's name do you mean by that? You don't –"

"Of course I don't! I love Serena because she is mortal, because she has the sweetest kind of freckle only on one side of her face, because she is not symmetrical like a piece from an assembly line…but what stands before us is a different creature entirely."

"How could Chuck ever have cared for her, then, if she is too divine a creation to suit you?"

"He sees and loves the flaws in her that she keeps so carefully hidden." Chuck, slumped over the bar with his eyes on his scotch and his lapels wrinkled, didn't at that moment appear capable of seeing past his own intoxication. "Her selfishness. Her vanity. Her arrogance. Her pride."

"He isn't watching her now," Jenny retorted petulantly.

Dan shook his head at his sister's own arrogance. "You fool," he said without malice. "Do you think she only snaps at you now and again because she's afraid for herself? Did she come here because she wanted a vacation with you as her companion? Chuck doesn't look at her because he wants her safe from you, because to look would be to break her bonds and bid her to come to him. Blair hasn't buried you in ignominy because she knows that you're cruel, crueller than I ever guessed you could be, and that you might hurt him in order to hurt her. Do you think she would hang back on Nate Archibald's arm if your husband so much as glanced in her direction? Do you think he would wait for you, and not walk with her into the bowels of Hell if needs be?" Dan turned away, disgusted. "I don't know who you are anymore, Jen, but I expected you to know better. You cut them off from one another rather than letting their ardour cool, and in so doing fanned them into a flame, and that frightens you. That frightens you so intensely that you have to mock her gown and my sentiments rather than admit how frightened you are."

She'd become a sickly yellow as he spoke, and her entire countenance was closed against him. The white blonde with its frizz and pomp and circumstance was all wrong with such a colour. "You're dismissed."

He chuckled. "I'm not the help, you can't dismiss me. Lie and make me a copper smelting heir if you must, but I won't bend the knee and thank you for it. I owe it to you as your brother not to lie to you."

Chuck waited until Blair reached the foot of the stairs, her hand still on Nate's arms, every part of him angled towards her, to the radiance of her pearls, her gauze, to her glow in the early evening. Draining his glass, he stood, and wandered quite casually away towards a group of would be somebodies, rubbing the stubble on his jaw and ignoring the host, the guests and the party in general.

As if he'd never meant to wait for her at all.

_**~#~**_

"You asked me to escort you, not to be the accessory to a crime."

Blair hid her victory behind one hand. "Oh, shush. It's not as if I've done anything wrong."

"Only denied every woman in the room her chance at beauty."

"Surely I've given every woman in the room reason to be glad that she's married, and that we shan't have to cross swords." There were citrines in her ears, hanging like sparkling pears with a stalks of golden leaves.

"A quiet life would never do for you, would it?"

Nate had a habit of making things appear, so accustomed was he to getting exactly what he wanted. Even as he finished the sentence, there was a flute of champagne in either hand, and he chimed the rim of his gently against Blair's.

"How can such a one be quiet when she is constantly accompanied by heavenly choirs?"

Blair swirled and immediately dropped into a curtsey. She rose a second before she should, but Prince Damien Dalgaard lazily winked away the impertinence and continued, "So refreshing, Miss Blair Cornelia Waldorf of the society pages, to be able to converse with a lady without having to stand a foot away from her and shout my compliments across her skirts."

"Does shouting your compliments at ladies make them any more successful?"

The prince laughed, but again, in a lazy sort of way. He slid from place to place rather than walked, and his eyelids were never entirely raised. He gave the appearance of never giving a person his full attention, although Blair had it on good authority that red roses had been delivered twice to Jenny and Chuck's suite, with particular attention paid to when the latter was out. She was about to bring up this point when there was ever such a slight pressure on her instep; Blair glanced down. She was startled by the sight Nate's well polished black shoe atop her own, reminding her of her place and her manners. She pinched the inside of his elbow, hard.

"No, but being a prince does." At least he admitted it. "This damned hotel could not get the quartet I requested," he went on, and Blair pinched Nate again as he opened his mouth to object to cursing in front of ladies. "Otherwise I would beg you to favour me with a dance."

"As you can see, I am escorted."

"Mr Vanderbilt is an excellent partner."

"Not at all," Nate demurred. "I fear I can't flirt as well as she does."

The air of amicability was becoming brittle, these blue eyed, blue-blooded boys both vying for the attention of the pretty dolly in her pretty dress who had caused the whole assembly to stop in its tracks. Blair swept another curtsey, and this time stayed down longer than she should. "You must excuse us, Your Highness," she cooed, irony thick in the sycophantic tone of her voice. "Mr Archibald and I have matters to discuss. His cousin, my dear friend is marrying another dear friend of ours, and there is much I have to say about _possessions_ between a husband and wife and the _proper time_ for giving gifts." By way of her own parting gift, Blair handed him her glass of champagne, which was accepted with a gracious nod.

She led Nate away from temptation, out onto the balcony. The air was almost chill that night, seasoned with the omnipresent scent of the sea. Leaning her elbows on the balustrade, Blair pressed her palms to her eyes and wished herself five years old again, capable of throwing tantrums and expressing herself that way. Still blind, she commanded, "You mustn't behave that way with me."

"I apologise."

"You're my escort, Nate, not my keeper."

"Would that anyone could keep you."

"I'm glad that they don't!"

"Your emotions are so much freer since we met in the ocean this morning. Does that give you any comfort? Does it atone for any of my bad behaviour that I appear to have enabled rather than restrained you? Are you free of the prison of your flesh?"

"You're teasing me."

"Yes."

"I'm not in the mood."

"Oh, Blair!" Gently, he took hold of her wrists and brought them down to the level of her waist. Blair's breath caught in her throat when he did not let go, tracing the circles of her knuckles, the lines across her palms, his voice warm and deep and amused. "When you are in the mood, you make me jealous with other women's husbands, and when you aren't, you shout at me and act as if you're ready to drown me at any second. I told you you don't belong to this time, but I'm not certain if you even belong to one woman; there's far too much of you for one body to hold, too many conflicting morals for one person, and far too many strange games to be played with fans and bicycles and flaming ice cream."

She flushed. "You're still teasing me."

"I would like to carry on," he said softly. "May I…"

It'd been the longest time in the world since she'd been asked.

"You may."

And it wasn't a wrong thing, their first kiss. His nose bumped hers lightly on the way down, and she closed her eyes and was quiet for a very long time. Nate kissed Blair without demanding, without even requiring that she part her lips. It was such a chaste kiss, but it was a kiss that lasted long past the time they needed to familiarise themselves with one another's scents, his clean, hers floral, and to make up their minds about how long the moments between should be. Blair looped her arms around Nate's neck and shut down her memory, feeling in silence with no sense of urgency and no desire either to deepen the kiss or end it. It did end, though, with a tiny sigh neither of them would admit to.

She was still, calm, stripped of anger and passion as he inquired, "Will you join me for a walk along the beach?"

There was another meaning beneath those words.

This was how the plan ended, this was her end of days.

He would offer her everything, in the romantic light of a silvery moon with wet sand clinging to the hem of her daring dress. This was everything she'd ever wanted – and yet it seemed so strange that one kiss had decided everything, just as Judas had sold Jesus in one night with one kiss.

But she smiled. What else was there to do but smile?

"That would be wonderful."

* * *

><p><em><strong>...and now I go out of the frying pan and into the fire, out of coursework and into exams. You've all been wonderfully patient, sorry for the wait. Thanks to: <strong>_**fiona249****, ggloverxx19, Laura, SaturnineSunshine, flipped, girl12, Nikki999, laffytaffylvr, jojo.4ever, Tess, Krazy4Spike, L, anon, BellaB2010, odyjha, mNEONw _(three reviews from you, thank you very much!)_, anon, CaroDaria, alright, MM, lovetvtomuchxo, nIGHTSrAVEN47, Stephycats7785, Lindsay, chuckbandblair, Meg, chuckandblair _and_ bowtiesandheadbands. _Your reviews, your support and your continued readership means the world to me._**


	17. Or Forever Hold Your Peace

**16. Or Forever Hold Your Peace**

Beneath layers of skin, of fat, of flesh, beneath proudly arching bones, in prime position yet slightly off-centre was a threadbare, crimson thing with as many holes as if it were merely a sieve for sentiment, not a machine to power five feet and a few inches more of woman. It was pulling, pulling on its own strings as Blair's small heels stabbed into the sand, as she followed in Nate's footsteps down to the line of surf. She kicked her shoes off there, and stood with the tide sucking at her ankles and swelling around the hem of her gown.

Moonlight bleached the colour from him, from his eyes, from his hair. They were all silver, the white tie and shirt close to blinding in the middle of midnight.

"Blair," he said.

She waded a little deeper, paddling like a child and indelibly ruining the silk of her stockings. They would never wash, and she wasn't sure if she cared; stars were reflected on the water's surface. Maybe they'd fallen and were floating in it.

Her threadbare, crimson heart didn't respond to the way he said her name.

"Nate."

But he remained on the beach. "I don't know if I've ever met a woman your equal, not for beauty, not for intelligence, not for wit…not for rage, for the fear you hold inside yourself that nobody will want you now you're past sixteen and alone but for Serena." She'd had a father and had a mother, but he spoke the truth. "In a way, you're naïve. Magic tricks still delight you, New York is still all you want for your future – but we can teach each other, can't we? I can become more cultured, more prudent, more like the kind of man a Vanderbilt should be. You could help me, show me which investments you think best, the books you recommend…but you could learn too, Blair, about love and life and looking beyond what you know to what you imagine."

"I imagined," Blair told him flatly. "I dared to imagine more than you ever could, and where has it brought me?"

"To me," was his swift reply. "Life need not be an ocean that pulls you this way and that. There is such a thing as solid ground. I could be like that for you, I could be solid."

She turned her head and glanced over her shoulder at the sea, as if it had an answer, as if the dark waste that was only spangled with silver and not gilded, as Nate was, would tell her what to do. She knew what her mother would wish her to do, she knew the most sensible course of action – and yet there was a taste at the back of her tongue more bitter than saltwater. The most sensible course of action had been to turn down Chuck's proposal, to banish him from a storm of sheets as a storm had torn the sky apart outside and she'd torn herself apart within. The most sensible course of action had been to let Jenny blackmail her and preserve her reputation, to burn his letters, to let the spiky vowels and consonants catch and to raze him from her memory likewise.

And yet here she stood.

And one day, one day in one or a hundred years, he would call for her. She would leave Nate, leave their children, leave every trace of propriety behind and go to him. Who deserved that, a whore for a wife, a woman who could never entirely be his…but entirely was overstating the matter. She could never be his at all, not her skin, not her fat, not her flesh, not her bones. Her heart, with its many unhealed holes, was neither in Nate's nor in her possession.

Trying to get it back had been as hopeless as trying to swim all the way to the horizon.

"Will you marry me?"

Her mouth fell open, but Blair made no sound.

"Will you?"

"I…"

"Blair, all you have to do is say yes."

"I can't."

"Why?"

"I've been using you." And admitting it to him was tantamount to admitting it to herself. "I didn't mean to, I…" Her hand stretched, reached, fell back to her side. "You're everything I ought to want, Nate, you are! You have the perfect name and the perfect manners and you're kind and good and uncomplicated, you'd be the perfect husband!" First one tear fell, shining silver, and then they wouldn't stop. "You and I would be perfect together, and I – I hate myself! I didn't mean to use you, but you aren't, you see, you're not him, you see, you're the exact opposite of everything he is and everything that makes every voice in my head scream 'don't' every time I let myself – every time I even think about letting myself – I'm sorry!" Her voice broke into a wail. "I'm sorry, Nate, I'm sorry!"

"Who are you talking about?"

"Nate, you know –"

"Who are you talking about?" He demanded. He was no less attractive in anger, though his features were twisted and the words came out through gritted teeth. "I need to hear you say it. I could forgive you with time, so before you make a mistake in earnest, say it."

"But you know!"

"Then tell me!"

She dropped to her knees, a mean, low thing, a threadbare, crimson thing in a sparkling dress. "I love Chuck Bass," Blair whispered, and the picture window paradise of Palm Beach smashed. "Nate!"

She shouted his name at his retreating back, over and over, for so long that it became a hoarse croak, a chant of Nate, Nate, Nate that meant _Nate_,_ help me_, and _Nate_, _come back_, and _Nate_, _you don't understand_. Blair curled in on herself and sobbed, shook with sobbing, fought for each breath past the moisture in her throat and became senseless on the sand, not counting the minutes but the tears as they fell and who they were for: for Nate who she would never have, for Serena who was leaving her, for Dan who understood more than he should, for Jenny who had paid back years of use by using her in return. The single syllable of _Nate_ blurred out everything else in her mind, but Blair knew who she was truly crying for without even having to shape his name with her lips.

So she didn't call, but he found her nonetheless.

Everything around the torso hung limp, lifeless limbs, lolling neck, the sheer weight of a Worth dress once worth its weight in gold soaked, stained, now worthless. Chuck lifted Blair without saying a word, without waiting for her to acquiesce or even acknowledge his presence. Silently, he carried her back over the dunes, staring straight ahead and ignoring everything else but the march, ignoring the hundred plus pounds of girl and gown and tears and the weight of the world.

He planted each foot firmly, as that was what he was programmed to do. He didn't speak.

He didn't even appear to feel.

The lobby was empty, everyone being gathered in the ballroom, the clerk snoozing at his post and the elevator operator nowhere in sight. Thus, they ascended alone, and Blair came to herself seated on the scalloped lid of the lavatory of the honeymoon suite. Chuck was on his knees before her, dabbing at her face with a cool sponge. She wasn't sure if she was ready to see him yet, and closed her eyes; the light touch passed over both lids, soothing the puffy skin. Tiny salt flecks clung to her lashes, tears or sea spray caught and crystallised. The sponge rubbed at but couldn't erase them entirely, so hard had Blair wept in the warm night with the cold ocean lapping at her cheek.

"He didn't hurt you." He already knew the answer.

"No."

"But you hurt him." He knew that too.

"Yes." She finally found enough courage to look at him squarely, to follow the gaze so carefully averted. As ever, she made an itinerary: the black gold eyes, the strong nose, the stronger cheekbones and chin, currently marred with patches of pale brown. Why, she couldn't have said, but Blair suddenly found herself choking back laughter and beginning to cry again, tears running over his fingers and dripping off her chin.

"What is it?"

"You'll think me absurd."

"I think you hysterical at the moment."

"Maybe you should go back to the party."

"I was at the party. I'm not really that into it."

"Chuck…"

"What is it?" He repeated.

"Can you shave?"

"I _can_, naturally."

"I mean, would you?"

"You can't be sensible until I've shaved?" This was in such a perfect tone of polite inquiry that Blair wanted to throw something at him. He'd rescued her, for all intents and purposes, carried her home, and now he wouldn't take her seriously. She could only be hysterical, of course, there could be no other reason for her finding him amusing.

"Why can't you just shave the damned beard?" She snapped –

And instantly subsided as he opened the cabinet and set to doing her bidding.

He must've had a valet all his life, for Chuck's hand was neither steady nor gentle. The first cut opened as he came up from beneath the right side of his jaw, a red bloom on the white foam, and he didn't flinch. He scraped away at himself with nothing like the smooth movements of a professional, irritating the skin with his roughness, agitating Blair who wanted to snatch the razor from his hand before he cut his throat. She held her peace, however, because she'd asked him to do it and he would damn well get it done now, whatever the consequences.

That was who he was, and she should've known better.

"There." His chin and cheeks were bare and damp, mouth suddenly an island, tense, vulnerable. "Will I serve?" He was proud, and still he'd shaved for her and been robbed him of his strength like Samson one more time. Chuck knelt before Blair, wounded, ridiculous, baring the tender nape of his neck as he leant forwards.

And she, with trembling fingers, stretched out and stroked the fine hair where his skull began with her heart in the touch.

"I love you," was no more than a breath from between Blair's dry lips. "I'm in love with you. I've tried to kill it, to run away from it, but I can't, and I don't want to anymore. I don't care that you belong to Jenny in the right way, the proper way, because you're mine in the only way that matters: with or without God's blessing, I will love, honour and obey you until the day I die."

She spoke her marriage vows without his consent, and she raised his head and kissed him without his permission too. Her fingertips curled in behind the fine jawbone, smooth now, moving her mouth ever so slightly, not opening, not closing, but waiting to be kissed.

The air had an expectant quality to it, like corked champagne.

Slowly, refusing to be beaten by Chuck's stubborn stillness, Blair peeled her damp bodice away to reveal shell pink silk and shaking mauve shoulders, the soft shapes of her arms and chest and the hard cinched waist. She tilted her head backwards and bared her neck to him as he had to her, the ever so silly sacrificial lamb whose beauty was beyond compare and who was quivering from top to toe, dark makeup smudged around the electricity in her eyes.

Of course he took her, to love, to honour, to cherish. Of course he lifted her clean out of her skirts and kissed the livid little throat, the spars of clavicle, the first rib on either side and then downward, devouring her as she squeezed out heartbeat after heartbeat into the silence. Chuck even kissed her neat ankles, unable to explain why. He'd been buried alive by his own nobility, and now even one brick removed, now two, now three, was blinding him with sunlight, he who'd spent so long in the dark of his own thoughts, denying his own desires. There was the desperation to hold her, to shake her, to get her dry; he chose the last, stripped Blair of the last of her wet things and cocooned her in sheets. She sat with her back against his front as he followed the curve of her scalp over and over, removing gems and pins as he went. The feel of her spine gave him a lovely kind of pain, the solidity of it.

"Are you warm enough?" Came after a long time of not moving, not speaking.

"Yes, thank you."

"Don't talk that way."

"What way?"

"As if we were strangers."

She turned onto her front and moulded her shape to his. Her elbows dug into the mattress where they propped up her chin. "You've always been strange to me. You're all the strange and perfect things I believed I could never have, the alcohol and adventures, the betting tips, the wild bedtime stories. You've been my love and my lover and my friend for as long as I can remember, all of it jumbled up and not quite logical. Strange and perfect, not a stranger."

"Lover." The white innerness from her underarm to her wrist was a strange and perfect thing, and his thumb latched onto her cotillion bracelet.

"Lover," Blair murmured, slipping her hands beneath his shoulders. Her mouth tangled with his, victory-flavoured velvet, milk and honey, together making manna in the desert. The room grew hotter as rain fell and failed to break the mugginess in the air, and Blair sat astride her prize and became unaware of the heat. She hadn't wanted to stop kissing him but this was so easy, this rolling, rocking motion as if she were on the sea. His grip on her hips guided her at first but this was simple, still simple but only more desperate as the room shrank and her ears filled with her breathing, his, his name, hers. Blair trembled still but Chuck soothed her, smoothing underneath her breasts, tracing the rosy circles smaller and smaller until they were touching properly, in the way that was improper, touching on the inside and outside with a storm brewing outside and another within. Every instant seemed to wash away a little more sadness, a little more regret for the choices they'd made. They crushed themselves together once the initial urgency had passed, close enough for Chuck's warm whisper, "Speak now, or forever hold your peace."

She could say nothing as her toes scrunched up, as her muscles strained and Blair did whatever the bodily version of capsizing was. She fell off the edge of rationality and became a wife even though it wasn't possible, even though there would be no white petticoats and tearful mother and father to give her away. Their marriage was consummated, their wedding night given over to consuming one another and conversing beneath the level of the thunder.

"I'm even in love with the worst of you," he told her. "There aren't words, really, to describe what I feel for the best."

"So you'll love in sickness. In poverty. In anger."

"Even in damnation."

"I'm not sure I believe in such things."

"No." Chuck was curled at Blair's back, his arm stretched out to reach her fingertips. "God would not make me us a Heaven in Hell."

"Why not?"

"Then he has no power. My Heaven is with you with no obstacles. My Hell is with you with things between us. What power does He have left, if it isn't your pleasure to leave?" She shuddered when he said that, and he couldn't help but smile. "You had a heathen baptism in the Atlantic and a heathen wedding to follow, after all." There was a sheen to her now, something bright and beautiful sprawled on Jenny Bass' bed and glowing with delight, sore but satisfied, cleansed of the sins of envy and pride. "You're never more lovely," Chuck decided. "Than when you're with me. Never so light but when against darkness."

"Must you talk about yourself that way?"

"It's how I am. It's why it astounds me that we ever happened."

"Charles Bass," Blair pronounced. She rolled over, pressed her fingertip to his lower lip as if to forestall a lecture. "We didn't just happen, and you are not the fiend you make yourself out to be. I chose you. I gave you my virtue, trite as that may seem, and it didn't just happen. I chose you tonight, and it didn't just happen. My choices shouldn't astound you, as if they were miracles of nature like earthquakes or phosphorescence; I'm better because I love you, and that's because you're good, truly good, no matter what you may appear on the outside. Jenny has a pretty skin and is rotten to the core, after all, but you're nothing like her."

The next kiss took her breath away. "Don't say her name," he growled.

"Why? She was mine before she was yours."

And the next: savage, passionate.

"You were mine before you were hers."

_Asher,_

_You once told me that forbidden love is the sweetest, the sharpest; I thought you were speaking flippantly and told you it wasn't a game. I see now that you were right, and that it is sweet and sharp in the way that cherry jam can be both sweet and sharp when it's made right. It is this mixture of pleasure and pain that keeps it fresh on the tongue and makes you remember the taste long after it's gone. When you have it again, a season or a decade or a lifetime later, it's as if you've been reprieved of not having it, released from bondage. I'm sorry if I'm not making sense, but this must be done quickly and done now, before I lose my nerve._

_This piece of news is to be read by you now, and published when I see you and explain everything. It was mine, and now it's yours, and soon it'll belong to everyone:_

_Blair Waldorf loves Chuck Bass._

_With love,  
>– B<em>

Blair let the ink dry on her missive before folding it and slipping it into the front of her stays. Her heart beat against the paper as she padded across the thick rugs, Turkish and Persian, and closed the door softly behind her. Her reasons for leaving were purely logistical: she had to be back in her room before anyone was awake, and while Ivy was well paid enough to keep her empty bed a secret, the hotel staff were not. Where had Jenny spent the night, Blair wondered, touching a tender spot on her throat – then she groaned aloud as she passed one of the hallway's many ornate mirrors and spied her reflection.

There was a small bruise an inch or so above her collarbone, about the shape and colour of a pansy. She clapped a hand over it instinctively and continued her walk, dragging the Worth gown behind her. A love bite was too 1895 for words…in fact, she was sure Serena had given her one then, when they were giggling girls who used one another to practise the arts romantic. That mark had meant a lot less, but the treatment was the same: a high collar or a scarf, and a liberal coating of powder before she went down for breakfast.

All thoughts of fresh bread and juice were pushed from her mind, however, by the surprise that greeted her outside her room door.

"Serena!"

"Blair?"

"What have we here?" Blair couldn't keep the smile from her voice as she tested the door handle. "Room locked, presumably all night, hair in missionary disarray, and yesterday's dress with today's shame all over it. What can you have been doing, S?"

Instead of being flustered, Serena coolly raised an eyebrow. "I could ask you the very same question."

"But I asked first."

"But I'm engaged."

"And I'm married."

"_Married_?"

"Legally, no. Morally…probably not. But emotionally, I am."

"Please tell me it was Nate, and not Chuck."

"Please tell me it was Dan, and not Jenny."

"Blair! I'm serious."

Blair was smaller than her friend, but she was certainly more fierce. "I deserve to be happy," she said, stubbornly and quietly, a child who fears her answer might not be the right one but who is determined to say it anyway. "We deserve to be happy, and I'm sick and tired of letting Mrs Astor and Mrs Holland and even Mrs _Bass_come between us just because being together means not being invited to their parties anymore. Society revolves around praising the virgins and shaming the sluts, but sluts have the chance to see much more of the world and be so much happier than their betters…and you agree with me, don't you?" Righteousness dimmed to curiosity. "That's why you went to Dan. That's why you'd rather travel the world than stay with me and mock girls in cheap dresses. You think there's more to life than informal visiting hours and the games we all play with one another."

"Perhaps," was Serena's noncommittal reply. "But I'm not the one playing with fire."

"Then you need not worry, since you're not likely to be burnt."

"You and Chuck will burn down all of New York if you're not careful."

"Perhaps. But you're not likely to be in New York by then, are you?"

_**~#~**_

One kiss.

Two, three.

Four and five, oddly enough between her neatly polished toes.

Jenny stretched and then bucked as the prince twisted up from the foot of the bed and lay beside her, his blue eyes and fair colouring vivid, far more handsome than any other man in Palm Beach – Jenny was absolutely certain of it. Her flower had been sold to the highest bidder, the best, the brightest, the richest. Let Chuck drink his scotch and whine about true love and damnation, let Nate Archibald moon after females in ridiculous dresses whose name didn't deserve to grace Jenny's love drunk ponderings. She was well aware she'd been through this cycle of throwing over one man and one way of thinking before, just as she'd thrown over her mistress and her class, but she didn't care. Damien's suite smelt of lilies.

"How did you sleep?" He was already grinning, anticipating the joke.

"Badly."

"Badly?"

"Poorly."

"Poorly?"

"Not at all," she allowed, and the grin grew wider. His teeth were so white, so even, lacking fault in the way that only royalty ever could. "I fear I slept not at all, Your Highness…or is it Your Excellency?"

"That depends." Damien propped himself up on his left elbow and Jenny lifted herself up on her right one, parting her lips to accept the gauche gold leaf wrapped cigarette he offered. "Did you sleep with the prince…" He lit both, and they both breathed deeply. Jenny did so because she felt she could do anything that morning, though the taste was bitter. Why did the gold only improve appearances, not the truth wrapped inside the paper? "Or the ambassador."

"Which is grander?"

"The prince, of course: Your Highness."

"Of course, Your Highness."

The door handle rattled and Jenny started, snatching the covers up as a manservant entered without so much as a knock. Damien, on the other hand, lay back against the pillows. "Ah, Wrigley. I'll have coffee and brandy at my usual time, and Mrs Bass will be escorted down to the best breakfast room before her guests arrive."

"Yes, Your Highness."

The prince laughed at the expression of surprise bugging out his companion's features, and kissed her firmly on the mouth. "We can't lounge around in bed all day, goddess divine. You have to put your public face on, and I mine. Naturally, we can't be seen together for the next few days." He tipped her a wink in spite of Wrigley – who didn't seem to know the meaning of privacy – and chucked her under the chin.

"But when will I see you again?"

"Soon. Wrigley will give you the tea you need."

"What? What tea? Your Highness, I –"

He gave her a gentle push. "Get out, Jenny Bass, and let the servant explain."

Wrigley did explain as he escorted Jenny down the corridor and into an elevator hidden behind a section of the wall painted with flowers. Dispassionately, he wiped his thumb over her rouge to dull the colour, too bold for the first flush of day, and told her to drink the tea for as many days as she hoped to spend with the prince. He would be in contact soon, either via note or Wrigley. He wouldn't speak of their dalliance to her husband, and she wouldn't speak of it to her friends.

Jenny was appalled by the very idea. "Who would I tell?" Her mind leapt back in time to last night, before the ball, when she'd seen her thin white legs beneath her heavy purple skirt and admired the contrast. Those legs were beginning to cramp, and her skirt was wrinkled and limp.

"I couldn't say." The manservant walked her out of the elevator into the hallway which led to her suite, then bent at the waist, as was expected. She expected to see awe in his face, or delight at having escorted her; instead, he appeared perfectly blank.

"Are you sassing me?" She demanded.

"No, ma'am." He blinked. " But it might interest you to know…" A pause, to heighten that interest.

"To know…what?"

"His Highness has heard you were not the only one of the Bass party to sleep in an improper place last night."

"And how does he know that?"

Wrigley blinked again, and his bottle green eyes flashed. "He heard from a man who saw a queer sight: your husband carrying a drowned woman, and young Mr Vanderbilt drowning himself in champagne."

Vanderbilt?

Archibald.

Nathaniel Archibald.

Nate Archibald drowning in champagne.

Her husband.

Chuck.

Carrying a drowned woman.

"Blair."

* * *

><p><strong><em>Update: the trolls have descended and their comments have been deleted - nonetheless, I've posted 'Of Sluts and Slut-Shaming' on my Tumblr to explain this chapter to those who take issue with it. Please feel free to ask any questions there too.<br>_**

**_Exams are over, summer is here, and you and I and Chuck and Blair can finally spend some time together. Thanks to:_ Eternally Romantic, Stephycats7785, teddy bear, Laura, abelard, lulubelle2010, Krazy4Spike, jojo.4ever, L, Meg, SaturnineSunshine, Nikki999, lovetvtomuchxo, odyjha, Rf, thepluot, fanny0997, nIGHTSrAVEN47, 29cmk, BellaB2010, Helen _and_ Maribells._ If you're still here after so long, take a shot. I love you all._**


	18. Enough

**17. Enough**

_Do you remember when broken hearts were only the cheaper cuts of meat, all glistening and gristly, and we too fine to pick them up and dirty our gloves?  
><em>– Excerpt from a letter from BW to a friend abroad for the season, July 1897.

Despite Damien's promise and Wrigley's diligence, Jenny was not the first down to breakfast that morning. Serena was lying down with a headache – which meant she had no wish to discuss her activities of the night before and felt she was being unfairly pestered – so Blair went down alone, lace frills and cuffs fluttering every time she passed an open window or checked that the buttons holding up her high collar at the back were properly fastened. She started upon entering the breakfast room and seeing not one but two early risers: one was Nate, and the other was a lady whose back was to Blair and whose ruby red day dress seemed oddly familiar. She was talking animatedly, and wisps of caramel coloured hair had escaped their twist at the nape of her neck.

And then Ivy turned, her eyes betraying only polite astonishment.

"Miss Blair Waldorf," said Nate, his voice clipped but not sharp enough to wound. "May I introduce Miss Charlotte Rhodes, lately of California."

The maid rose from her seat at the table of heiresses and magnates and swept towards Blair, making some remark about a previous acquaintance before leaning forward to kiss the stunned girl's cheek. As she moved from left to right, Blair recovered herself enough to murmur, "You shouldn't be wearing red so early in the day."

"You should've listened to Mrs van der Woodsen about my being a liar," was the reply.

It was more of a delight to Blair than anything else, to have been outfoxed by this young fox without even scenting a trap. It freed her of the guilt which had resurfaced when she'd spied Nate's hands anxiously pleating the tablecloth, and she took pleasure in seeing his fingers still as Ivy fabricated without pause, explaining from whence she'd come and why, describing her season out with Blair and her minions and even making him laugh by screwing up her face as she took an eager bite of grapefruit. Blair, rightly ravenous, ordered a dish of cold meat and some cheese.

It was this Nate settled upon to test the waters between them, his tone light but his brow furrowed. "No longer eating like a bird, I see."

"I'm penitent, but not enough to fast." An apology, of sorts, as she buttered a slice of bread, then turned it over to smooth soft cheese over the other side with the flat of her knife. "I'm so glad you invited Miss Rhodes to breakfast, I'd forgotten quite how much of a treat she is."

Ivy repaid the kind lie with another. "How glowing and refreshed you look this morning, Miss Waldorf. Do allow me to straighten your collar."

Her touch was too well-practised for a lady of leisure, but gentlemen didn't notice such things, and Nate least of all. Blair winced a little when the tender mark she was hiding was brushed, and Ivy leant back and smiled in satisfaction. She knew what her former mistress had been doing the night before, and they were going to keep each other's secrets. There was a general air of cordiality the more they three talked, though Blair took care to avoid outright lies and focused on her plate as much as she could; she knew when Nate's gaze was fixed upon her, and she knew all too well the small stabs of pain he must be experiencing, ebbing each time he turned from her to speak to this charming new acquaintance. It was a good thing he'd never been in love her, not really, for his hurts would heal. They might, in time, become friends.

They might, in time, have been more.

Blair ate her bread and cheese and tried not to think about that.

Jenny arrived late with her neckline low and her cleavage high and powdered. There was something frantic about her that morning, as she rapidly blinked over the spread and then dismissed everything but black coffee, sipping with deliberate slowness. She didn't even appear to have noticed Ivy who, after a moment of panic concealed behind a frozen smile, had gone back to being taught how to peel a whole orange in one motion. In contradiction to every other time she'd encountered her, Blair found herself concerned for Jenny – she looked the part of a stray cat about to disappear beneath the wheels of a carriage, too frightened to run, and yet Blair shouldn't care what she felt when Jenny had gone out of her way to ruin her, to make her life miserable and to tear from her some of the sweetest experiences of her life.

Her resolve stiffened when Chuck entered the room, and along with him the recollection of a recent sweet experience: it was like warm honey pouring inside her, dripping down her throat and pooling in her stomach. He was perfectly coiffed, shaven and sober. His eyes ran hot, so she averted hers. That gaze, however, was harder to ignore than Nate's. She abandoned her bread and began cutting a slice of ham into very small pieces.

"Serena is still in bed," Blair announced when it became apparent their host wasn't at all bothered who Ivy was and was more interested in pressing the toe of his shoe to hers underneath the table. She planted her foot on top to forestall him. "She has a headache after so much champagne last night."

"It was rather a grand gala, wasn't it?" Ivy remarked, as if she'd been there and not otherwise employed putting pleats in a heavy linen skirt.

"It was rather a grand night," Jenny put in, much to everyone's surprise. She withdrew one of her black cigarettes and lit it, though nobody joined her. The smell of smoke made Blair feel curiously queasy, which she attributed to the cheese and saw to with half a glass of water. "I can't imagine where Dan is, but I suppose he joined his beloved in indulging in – what was it you said?" A gurgle of laughter, a deep drag on the cigarette. "Champagne. Yes. I'm sure he and Serena wined and dined all night, and left our poor Miss B to her own devices."

"I did fine on my own, thank you." Above Blair's brow, her freshly washed hair was as smooth as silk, and her manner was just the same.

"But you left the party before even they did." The coffee cup Jenny was holding came down with a little too much force, and hot liquid slopped onto her hand. She didn't pay it any heed. "You and _you_, Mr Archibald, such a well matched pair. Did you take a stroll along the beach by moonlight? You must have, the vista was too romantic for words."

Chuck applied a napkin to his wife as a matter of form. "Then perhaps you'd best not speak of it."

"And what did you get up to last night? You snuck away before I could get a dance from you, and the concierge didn't know where you were to be found when the ball was over."

"I had business matters to attend to." The lie was uncomfortable. He sensed the same desperation in Jenny's manner that Blair had and began to wonder how much she knew. Further embellishments on the tale of last night could fall apart if Jenny knew, if Jenny decided to be vindictive here and now rather than to store up her revenge for a later date. There was something different about her today, besides the blinking, the coffee, the veiled accusations. She sat her chair awkwardly, as if she were bruised. She'd washed before breakfast, and yet there was an aroma underlying the smoke he didn't recognise.

It was dawning on Chuck that he either knew his wife too well, or not well enough. Too well meant an unintentional closeness. Not well enough meant not well enough to keep Blair safe from her. Why did he take every precaution to keep one at arm's length and from disgrace, and yet was so transparent with the other about his motivations and desires?

Maybe Jenny knew him too well.

This was far from the genteel introduction to society Ivy had imagined when she'd stolen Blair's dress and curling iron. In the ladies' absence, there'd been time to bathe in the magnificent bathtub, to apply a soupçon of rouge and a splash of disused perfume, the fragrance that had been the favourite before Florida, before Ivy had known Blair, how she liked her coiffure, how she took her tea and her men. On that subject, Ivy saw Nate in the shrewd light of a hustler with a gull – but he also stirred a strange softness inside her. She'd known men like him, fleeced more of them than he'd had hot dinners, and thus was astute enough to understand why there was such tension over toast and juice, why everyone was so edgy before the day had even begun.

She'd never been in love, and this was why; food didn't go well with a stomach full of butterflies, and Ivy would rather be lonely than hungry. These people had never been hungry, therefore these people were terrified of being alone.

"You can make it up to me today." The waiter brought more coffee, which Jenny downed, Blair sipped and Chuck nursed. "There's the most divine ruby ring I saw in the jewellers' window, a round stone set in yellow gold."

"Like Miss Waldorf's?" Ivy ventured.

Jenny let her eyelids lower to allow herself only a glimpse of Blair's ruby, the heart she'd once so envied. "A ruby is the sign of a virtuous woman," she answered. "So no. Not at all like Miss Waldorf's."

That gave the table pause. They were too well-bred to ask questions, but there was a moment where everybody appeared to breathe in at once, when Chuck's countenance became as dark as a thundercloud and he reached for the mustard with something like savagery. Blair's straightened, levering her back from the chair cushion and pulling her spine into absolute true. Nate was aware she was no angel, and Ivy would've guessed as much by now. Even if Jenny decided to and announce Blair's lack of virtue then and there, it would gain her nothing.

As she stared at Jenny's bright pink cheeks and hated her, Blair realised that her adversary was wearing a thick mask of makeup, not the usual touch up here and there. Her entire face was basted with cream, then powder, then rouge. Any actual skin was invisible, despite the amount of décolleté that was on show. Puzzling over this and looking harder, she began to perceive little patches of red here and there and, most damningly of all, a smudge of purple where the fabric of her dress began.

Purple, like the bruise on her throat.

Purple, where someone had kissed her passionately enough to leave a stain.

Blair bolted up from the table. "I'm afraid I've taken a share in Serena's headache…most unfortunate. Excuse me."

"Pray," said Jenny, rising with comparable speed, stubbing out her cigarette on the spotless tablecloth. "Let me help you."

What was there to do but leave the breakfast room together, dark and fair, righteous and rightful – where Chuck Bass was concerned, anyway. Blair segued to her left, into a small parlour where the drapes were still closed and the walls were covered with watermarked silk. She touched her neck and felt her pulse racing.

They turned to one another at the same moment, but Blair spoke first.

"Give him up."

"No."

"Give him up now, and we'll go away together quietly. You can be the wronged woman, the tender-hearted victim."

"I _am_ the victim, and you're in no position to bargain!" The flounces at the foot of Jenny's skirt frothed and trailed as she surged forward. "I know where you were last night and what you did, and I will destroy you for it. Every person of note will turn their face from you, every door on Fifth Avenue will be closed. You will be renowned as the Whore of Manhattan, Blair Waldorf who dared too much and cared too little about the station to which she was born!"

"And what station were you born to? To shine my shoes and starch my chemises?" Blair took one step and another, crimson with ire. "He doesn't love you, _Miss_ Humphrey, _Little_ J, and he never will. You can drag my name through the mud, and I will smile at you for it. You can have my place, you can be lauded as the one who exposed me. I'll have love, in the end. What will you have? Who will you have left?"

"My friends, my brother –"

"Your friends the social climbers, your brother who'll soon be married and gone?"

"I'll have Chuck!" Jenny shrieked. "I'll have him and you won't, because he feels for me! He's never struck me, never forced himself on me, never denied me anything I wanted! I can offer him a life of comfort, of knowing that his wife will never outshine him or refuse him like you have! I _need_ him, and the only reason you even want him now is because he's mine. Don't you see? You had him on a platter and you knocked him back because he was poor. He came back and was rich and desirable and didn't want you, and you went after him again! I've been devoted to him since the moment I decided he'd be mine, whereas you pick him up and put him down whenever it pleases you."

"If you're so devoted, then who made his mark on your chest?"

"Chuck."

"I don't believe you."

"Then why so angry, princess? You have your doubts."

"I doubt your honesty."

"You ran from the table all pale and pitiful and lied about a headache the instant you saw it. You know we share a suite and a bed, you know there's a chance. You worry you're going to spend the rest of your life worrying about me as you expect that I worry about you, for all your professions of certainty of his love. You're faithless," she spat. "And a faithless woman is worth far less than a ladies' maid."

"Tell the truth!"

"Yes, Jenny." The door closed quietly behind him, and his wife whirled with her china blue gaze as innocent as a kitten's. "Tell the truth."

Chuck was leonine in his pale day suit, hair mussed as if he'd pushed a hand through it before deciding how to proceed. That hand might've trembled, but his drawl was as smooth as ever.

"She doesn't deserve you," was her reply, swiftly changing tack.

"No."

Blair blanched.

"It isn't a matter of dessert, of weighing up how much of a saint or a sinner somebody is before you choose to love them. Good people don't only care for good people, nor bad for bad; the person you love is the one you take for better or worse. It's the person who becomes a part of you, you and they are indivisible. It's the person you treat like fine china rather than break, even if breaking them would give you such pleasure…" He shook his head at Jenny, sadly, almost kindly. "I wish to God there were someone better to teach you this. Someone who could teach you with love, not out of duty."

Jenny shook her head right back at him. "She's not taking you from me."

"No. We'll go on with this pretence until I can make arrangements for you. I won't embarrass you by running away with another woman on what ought to be your honeymoon, and you won't expose Blair and I before I decide we're ready for you to do so. This should end on fair terms, for all that's not how it began."

"Chuck…"

"No, Jenny. No. You will go to our room and wait until I come for you, and for the first time in our married life you will obey my word. You claim to value our marriage so very highly, after all."

She charged past him, banged open the door, then paused and calmed herself enough to move at a sedate pace down the hallway. Blair kept her eyes fixed upon the retreating figure until they watered, and then she continued to stare.

"Are you well?"

"She's grieving." Jenny was walking away with her neck stretched out and up like a swan's. She wasn't cowed. She wasn't crying. "She obeyed you. Grief causes you to engage or disengage in ways you never thought possible."

Chuck looked at Blair, and perhaps it was the first time in a long time he'd looked and hadn't looked away almost instantly. There was a mosquito bite below her right ear, some strands of hair frizzed instead of delicately curling; he'd been mistaken to think of her as some kind of deity, a radiant goddess whose sphere he could only just touch. She was human, and her face was hard and soft with resolve at the same time.

"Are you grieving now?"

"Yes, Charles." Blair pronounced his full name with care before tucking it away in her heart. "I'm grieving. I'm grieving because to you I'm still made of fine china, and you'd rather I gather dust than break me."

"Blair." He moved to stand before her and frame her face with his fingers – long, elegant fingers that had never worked a day in his life, not really. She stretched up on her toes and gave him a kiss that made him ache, the gentle pressure of her mouth on his, not inviting him inside so much as closing herself against him. Chuck tried to fight it, drew back, traced her lips and the line where they were sealed. They didn't part, however, and Blair studied him gravely and stroked his shirtfront with her fingertips.

"I'm done," she said, close to a whisper. "She's right, Chuck. You treat me like fine china and I break you instead, and if we go on that way then there will never be an us. When we're apart, there's a fire. When we're together, it goes out and one or the other of us runs away in order to stoke it again. What kind of a life is that? You don't even want to leave with me now, for fear of…" She swallowed. "For fear of what, my losing my reputation? You would see Jenny settled as if she were your sister and not your blackmailing wife. You would rather see her settled than pack a bag and take a train with me, only take what mattered, brazen it out in New York or go somewhere where nobody knew us, where we could be whoever we wanted."

"I want you." Chuck kissed her again, fiercely, with enough force to elicit a gasp. "I want you and I want you to have everything."

"And I want you, even if that costs me everything." Blair disentangled herself, so rational on the outside when her heart was screaming at her brain and her lungs seemed to have stopped working in protest. "I'm going back to the city, and I'm going to try something new. You can find me if you that's what you really, truly want. I won't live as if I were spun from glass. I won't live as if my dance card and table for tea were all that mattered. Come to me, come for me when you can't live without me. No matter the risk. No matter the cost."

She left through the very door Jenny had, leaving Chuck alone, bereft of sense and meaning, wondering how it was the world had turned on its head: he'd caught her _in flagrante_ in the ladies' lounge at the opera and had taught her to smoke, to gamble, to rebel against what was expected of her; now he was the one with the poker face, playing a conservative game while Blair tossed her head and threw her money recklessly into the centre of the table.

_**~#~**_

"What are you doing?"

"Let me go!"

"No." Serena's fingers were curled into claws, and they dug deep into Blair's upper arms. "Not until you tell me what's changed between you coming in this morning and packing your bags this afternoon. Nate wouldn't have –"

"It wasn't Nate."

"Jenny?"

"Partly."

"B, you can't let her intimidate you!"

"He lets her intimidate him, S, insofar as he keeps delaying making a choice. He chooses me, yes, to have, but to be with? God, to be with me in the way that Darcy was with Elizabeth, without caring what his aunt or anyone had to say about it but her? That, he delays."

Blair had broken free and was shoving things, things that suddenly didn't seem important into her carpet bag, slamming shut her trunks, rushing hither and thither to get everything ready to go before Serena or Chuck could slow her down. Bottles of scent, pots of powder, wraps and hairpins and books were barely picked up before they were stacked up and tucked away, before Blair was ringing the bell for the boy to take her things to the train station. She stood before the mirror with the wide brim of her hat shading her face, the ribbon drooping in the noonday heat. That made her think of another hat, a ribbon surrendered to the ducks in Central Park…she slammed that part of her memory shut too, just like the cases, and pulled down her cuffs over the beaded edging of her gloves.

"Don't go."

Ivy appeared in the room with the silent step of a well-trained servant, and it was to her surprise as much as anyone's that her bottom lip was trembling.

"Ivy," Blair began sternly. "I mean, Charlotte."

"Charlie."

"Charlie, then."

"I know your reasons for going, and I don't understand them."

"You were eavesdropping."

The pretty golden brown head bobbed. "He loves you, Miss – Blair, and you love him too, and he's willing to show you that if only you'll wait a little, if only you'll allow him to put his affairs in order. I don't understand!" She almost wailed. This was not the way romances were supposed to go, not in novels and certainly not in life. "If you go, then she'll be happy, and she's too wicked to be happy! She was running around on Mr Bass last night –"

"As was Mr Bass himself," Serena interjected, none too gently.

Blair bowed her head, and her hat brim wobbled. "I thought that wouldn't matter to him. I thought he considered himself free of all husbandly duties when he found me on the beach last night…I'm not prepared to wait any longer, it's as simple as that. I had to wait to find out that Jenny blackmailed him into marriage and that it wasn't of his own free will, I had to wait while he courted me and then hated me and tried to foist me on Nate and then loved me again, and now I have to wait so he can sweep her under the rug and save me from, the damsel from that wicked witch? No. Never."

"Don't go."

"You have my new address." The bellhop had come for the bags, an elevator attendant with startlingly green eyes was waiting at the end of the corridor. "I'm done with a picture window life, I – Charlie. I'm done with being precisely who I'm expected to be. I will make my own way and I will do what I want and I will be the girl Chuck fell in love with in the first place, before everything got so screwed up." She smiled. "Do you remember me at sixteen, S?"

Serena hugged her friend so hard Blair felt as if her bones were creaking. "You wanted to be a pirate in petticoats."

"So I'm going home to the only man in my life who doesn't want to marry me. I'm hoping he can help me become a pirate in petticoats."

She was wearing that perfume, that perfume that had been hidden beneath a pile of gowns, the perfume she'd scorned because it made even Chuck's dog want to sit on her seat and be near her. Serena pressed her face into her friend's neck and inhaled, and wondered.

_A STOP Assume you have more than one room in your domicile STOP Will require bed and board for foreseeable future STOP Ask no questions STOP B STOP_

* * *

><p><em><strong>Thanks to:<strong>_** aliceeeebeth, SaturnineSunshine, blackrose . forever, Guest #1, Kiarax27, thegoodgossipgirl, fanny0997, Eternally Romantic, Trosev, ErinSmith20, Nikki999, lovetvtomuchxo, lulubelle2010, evieoh, odyjha, valentinosilkflowers, 29cmk, Meg, chuckandblair, A, alissa-jackie, eckomoon, thepluot, nIGHTSrAVEN47 **_**and**_** mNEONw. **


	19. A Gentleman Of Letters

**18. A Gentleman Of Letters**

The train had pulled safely into Grand Central Station before Blair was even stirring in her bunk; without a maid to shake her shoulder, she was startled awake by the sound of the whistle and a brand new cacophony of noise that was all New York: newly minted millionaires from the South with their accents twanging, shrieking about finding their platforms, the calls of newspaper sellers and coffee vendors, the station master huffing and puffing and shouting for his staff to attend the most valued – and valuable – travellers. Quickly, she splashed her face with cold water from the basin, noting the absence of her carpetbag and, presumably, her trunks too. The rest of Blair Waldorf was waiting for her on the platform, but the Blair Waldorf on the train had a dry mouth and a heavy heart and was inclined to drag her feet.

She was handed down from the train by a smiling guard, whose expression was insincere and whose briskness made the laziness of Florida seem very far away. The journey home had been so different from the outbound, allocating hours to sleeping and crying and scheming, every wash of tears finishing on the dot of two or four so she could turn back to the sheets of notepaper she'd had to beg from a fellow passenger and draw another thin black line linking two ideas together.

A warm arm around her neck made Blair gasp, and she was thrust face first into the plush striped fur of a man's coat. It smelt of flowers and musk, mixed in a subtly effeminate cologne, so she knew who it was without having to draw back and look up at his face.

"My dear girl." Asher Hornsby had her carpetbag in his hand. A bowler hat was propped rakishly on his head, his greatcoat was heavy grey wool with a collar sumptuous enough for a rug and a bunch of wilted violets was perched atop the luggage he'd collected on his friend's behalf. "I do wish you had been in the family way, and then you never would have gone away to that awful place and got so horribly brown."

"I'm not brown," Blair murmured.

"Toasted cream, then, nowhere near milk white enough to suit me. Come along, we're going home for a drink and a chat. 'Ask no questions'? Fuck your ask no questions."

_**~#~**_

"I don't think I've ever seen you quite so calm."

Chuck raised his head from a page of figures, a glass of scotch at his right hand since he clearly didn't care about the early hour. Dan dared to take the chair beside him, stretching out long legs in ill-fitting trousers and cocking his head on one side. _Talk_, was his tacit order. _Tell me things so fantastic they might as well be fiction._

"I can't calculate when I'm in a temper."

"And yet you have every reason to be in a temper."

"Shouldn't you be in Timbuktu by now?" Was the irritable riposte. Several sheets were stuck together, tacky where the wax seals ensuring their authenticity had rubbed against each other. "I don't believe I have any reason to be angry, except at you for making stupid remarks. What has happened thus far, I've brought upon myself. I married the wrong woman and presumed the one I left behind was the same as the one I could have now. Blair has changed, Blair is changing, and I offered her the deal she wanted as a sixteen year old debutante. I offered her the position of wife and mother without stopping to consider how things might've changed between us. She grew up, and I invited her to come play house with me."

"You're your own toughest critic."

"When all other critics have abandoned you, you'll take it upon yourself too. And besides, you write books." The black-gold eyes slanted towards Dan. "Do you send off to the printer without altering a single sentence? Or do you fuss and fret over the flow of a paragraph, the language, the structure of a sentence? Can you even bear to read your own work? You'll find you're already your own toughest critic, Humphrey, and it would be best for both you and your sister if you left me alone to decide her portion."

Dan drew in his breath. "What?"

"Are you surprised I'm paying her off?"

"Surprised that you caved to her? When Serena tells me Blair's back in the city, living with another man?"

Chuck's nostrils flared. "She can do as she pleases, of course. I'll fix things and then I'll go to her, and then she won't be living with anyone."

"Except you."

He didn't deny it.

"How do you know she'll wait for you?"

"Because."

"Because?"

"Because Blair always waits. To put it in terms even you can comprehend, she understands that long-term gratification takes time. I have to put together a new business proposal to offer myself to her again, and that'll take time. A lifetime together will take time to plan."

"I wouldn't bet on her patience."

"I wouldn't bet against it."

_Metropolitan Hotel, Lexington Avenue  
>1897<em>

"_We were supposed to be having tea downstairs…_"

"_I don't want any damn tea_."

_Hungry, hunting, restless mouths travelling over and around one another and content with just that._

"_You can't comport yourself correctly for five minutes._"

"_Stop talking._"

_She smiled and pulled her shirtwaist over her head. This was as far as it ever went, and even this was dangerous. The laces on her stays were so tight that her small breasts were pushed up and together, rising and falling with each intake of breath. There should have been another layer of clothing covering those outwardly innocent ribbons and frills, but there wasn't, and Chuck's tongue was dry because of it._

_Blair turned him over onto his back and perched above, gripping his hips with her knees. She must be unaware of what such a sight would do to him, and yet there the evidence was, already between them. He could just reach up and –_

_A knock at the door.  
><em>

"_Mr Bass_?"

_What business could his fool of a lawyer have, being there in the middle of the day?_

"_Will you wait_?"

"_Of course_."

"_Will you put your clothes back on_?"

_The pretty lips, bitten to cherry redness, pursed._

"_No._"

_**~#~**_

There was enough brandy lacing Blair's coffee to make her splutter and cough, but it warmed her through and stilled the shaking of her fingers. New York was a far cry from the clemency of Florida, and she was wrapped in an overlarge pair of Asher's pyjamas and one of his overlarge robes. He had an apartment, she'd discovered, where there were Chinese screens over the windows and lengths of silk draped over the chairs. Asher, who had taken up foreign cigarettes with a taste like nutmeg, demanded they only be smoked outside, and he wasn't permitting Blair to leave the room. It was strange, how being in the city led Blair to long to return to her house and the carton of Turkish cigarettes hidden in the white parlour, what power being home had over her.

How it might have the power to change her mind.

She'd divulged the entire story, and trembled a little more with each word. Her last night with Chuck had been the worst: her cup had rattled in its saucer until Asher had silently removed it. Blair saw the defining points of her life literally flash before her eyes: trying to throw away _Persuasion_ and its hateful, knowing inscription on the observation deck, playing cards in the dining car, flirting with Dan and Nate and kissing Chuck on the beach and taunting Chuck over croquet and demanding that he shave because he didn't look boyish enough, because he didn't look like _her_ boy anymore when his chin was rough and wouldn't feel the same beneath her palm.

Asher summarised the situation after several neat nips from his hip flask. "It appears that even you aren't sure what you want."

"Not to come second to Jenny."

"Of course not that."

"To be outrageous, to be the one who takes the initiative to ruin myself and not to leave it up to another person."

"Even such a person as he?"

"Even such a person."

"Still –" He took another swig. "Pirate in petticoats or not, you are the marrying kind, which is to say you are the marrying Charles Bass in June and letting me write a column about it kind. Haven't you dreamt about having little magnates running around the place, arguing about the price of mother's milk? Haven't you fantasised about waking up every morning and there being that blissful period before you need to get up when you can draw your nightgown over your head and press yourself directly –"

"That's not helping me work out what it is I do want!"

"Maybe that's what I want. My apologies."

"I accept." In one bold movement, Blair downed her coffee and sat up straight. "Nevertheless, stop lusting after what wouldn't have you even if you painted yourself purple and wore a petticoat, and give me your honest opinion."

"My honest opinion is that the world is not painted in black and white – you could be a wife if you wanted to, the kind of wife who promised her heart one hot night, not the kind who pours tea and sits meekly to one side. You could be a rebel if you wanted to, you could write naughty books or design naughty lingerie or ride horses in races or drink scotch in public. The two aren't mutually exclusive, and…" His tone became exponentially quieter, gentler. "No matter what past experience has taught you, you could have him and hold him by being yourself. You don't have to be vixen Blair always, fighting him off or leading him on with those big dark eyes of yours. You can be mournful Blair, didn't he know her once upon a time? You can be cruel Blair, you can be happy Blair. You can be a Blair who doesn't sit and embroider all day, who would want to marry that anyway? And you don't, by the way, have to act like wealth and position doesn't matter to you because of what happened between you in the past; you're contradicting yourself and acting like it matters a great deal right now, grabbing your future from his hands and running away with it over a thing as trivial – a thing as _compassionate_, in fact – as making sure that Jenny, who values position even more than you do, doesn't fall from grace. She's not you. She wouldn't survive."

"I…"

"Have some more brandy."

"You make me out to be the guilty party." Blair's mouth was set in a stubborn line. "As if everything might be ruined, and if it is then it's through my own fault."

"I do not such thing."

"You're interfering."

"I am not."

"Then what are you doing?"

"I'm expressing what you yourself are too afraid to admit: that independence matters to you and Chuck matters to you, and one doesn't necessarily come at the cost of the other. This is your chance at happiness. You think you shouldn't want it because you've never had it and it scares you."

"Asher, you –"

"Have some more brandy."

_**~#~**_

Jenny had never seen a fully naked man before, but had concluded that Damien was beautiful in his own way, as she was beautiful in hers. It gave her such pride to break his composure and make him groan, though even in the throes of passion he seemed constantly amused. Even now, when she peeked up at him from her position on her knees, bleached hair concealing her breasts and tongue wetting her lips, he was smiling.

"You're good," he announced. "I've decided to keep you."

"Your Highness?"

"Having a married mistress is quite the fashionable thing on the Continent." Leaning back, he flipped the catch on a box of tapered black cigars and ran his fingers up and down the selection, as if his choice were so very important in comparison to her future. "She is an honourable woman because she is married to an honourable man, and if her husband divorces her in the end, so much the better."

Jenny drew in her breath. "You would take me with you to Europe? To Belgium? To Paris?"

"Haven't you ever been?"

She couldn't bring herself to tell him she'd never been anywhere but New York, but it appeared he'd guessed as much; chewing nonchalantly on the end of his cigar, Damien drew up his legs and tucked them beneath him. Behind him lay the discarded pieces of an expensive suit, the white shirt with its sharp creases in all the right places, the striped silver necktie, the links and buckles and personal effects of a gentleman of leisure. His face betrayed no surprise at Jenny being not at all well-travelled and, as he finally lit the cigar, he remarked, "All American girls must be patriotic to the point of idiocy, for every one I meet assures me that the journey between New York and Newport is quite long enough to suit even the most wandering spirit."

"I've never been to Newport either," she admitted, daring much.

"No?"

"No."

Damien's fine blue eyes rolled upwards before settling upon Jenny again. "Then run and wash your face, and we'll go and see your husband and tell him where you plan – nay, insist – on spending the next few years."

The command, familiar by now, meant Wrigley would escort her back to her suite and instruct her as to which gown the prince would most admire. It seemed to Jenny that the prince most admired whichever dress matched the jewels around her neck, particularly the emeralds matching her engagement ring, the heavy necklace and earrings he liked to see her by wearing all day and night. The timid maid Eloise always hid herself and peeped as Tristan Wrigley undressed and redressed her mistress in the most professional manner imaginable, his hands never lingering for more than the instant that was required. Jenny was aware this was improper, but her head was spinning with Europe, Belgium, Paris as he tightened her laces to the point of breathlessness, as he draped one strand of pearls around her neck, white, and then another, grey, and then a third, pink.

It was Wrigley who dusted her arms with the glittering powder women around here wore, to darken their already sun bronzed limbs. Jenny no longer blushed, she could no longer blanch. She hadn't had any need, in any case, to turn white with shock or anger since Blair had upped and left and Dan had severed all ties with his sister, taking breakfast in his room and stalking past in her the hallway.

She'd ruin him when she had a spare moment.

She had the power, and he would have to acknowledge it when his pathetic little books stopped selling him and his uppity fiancée left him and his own sister laughed as she turned him away.

"You can say no, you know."

"What?" Jenny snapped out of her reverie. "What did you say?"

"You don't have to go to Europe with His Highness." Wrigley shifted uncomfortably, staring not at her but at the Turkey rug. "You can say no. It happens rarely, but people do say no to him, and as far as I know not one has gone up in flames on the spot or been found dead at a later date."

"Did the prince bid you tell me this?"

"No."

"Then why say it?"

"Call it friendly advice." Wrigley raised his gaze, and Jenny felt a hot-cold shiver run through her. He was usually so politely blank, politely silent. She'd assumed he was disinterested by nature.

"I am not your friend." She brushed her hair over her right shoulder, the left naked but for a spiky nodule of bone.

"Call it advice, then."

"I never say no," said Jenny, and drew on a new pair of gloves.

_**~#~**_

They took lunch at Delacroix's, as they had on Blair's birthday. There was a champagne coloured mink wrapped around her neck and a fox around his, but otherwise they were similarly dressed in black with turned back cuffs. Six ageing women were seated at the next table, remnants of another age, children of the French Revolution, clustered around a sausage brioche. Truffles studded its surface, gleaming like black diamonds, but they barely picked at it with their garishly painted nails.

Asher shuddered. "My deepest fear is that I'll end my days resembling one of those dames."

"You're far too handsome," Blair flattered. Her tea was too weak, more water than leaf, but she drank it down with a distracted air and was soon pouring herself another cup.

"Miss Waldorf? Miss Blair Waldorf?"

She raised her head from contemplation of the milk jug and gave a start of surprise. There, standing before her, his hair damp from the misty air of the street, was Prince Louis Grimaldi: a prize she'd once sought, a prince she'd once kissed. The cut of his coat was absolutely splendid, she noticed first, charcoal grey, with a red silk scarf peeping out at the top. Why on earth would he be in Delacroix's – but then why on earth not, when French gentry had been coming here for generations and he was very nearly a Frenchman. "Your Highness," Blair hailed him, and Asher's cup crashed to the floor and smashed. "What a surprise!"

"What a pleasure," he corrected her, flashing her a grin and appearing much more at ease than he had when they'd met at the consulate. "May I join you?"

"_Bien sûr_!" There was no other place set at the table, but there was space on the padded bench beside Asher. She gave him a shove. "Your Highness, may I present my friend Mr Asher Hornsby, of the New York Standard. Asher, this is His Highness Prince Louis Grimaldi of Monaco."

"Gah," replied Asher. Prince Louis Grimaldi of Monaco sat down beside him nonetheless.

Blair poured for all three, shooting the waiter a meaningful glance and inching her brows up her forehead until the broken cup was cleared away and replaced. Beneath the table, she stabbed the Gamesome Gallant with a hairpin and succeeded into bringing him back to himself.

"How do you do, Your Highness?"

"Very well, Mr Hornsby, thank you."

"Doesn't Miss Waldorf look well? She's just returned from an unseasonable sojourn in Florida, apparently quite the thing for young ladies these days."

"Miss Waldorf looks very well," Louis agreed, passing his tea over the leaves again in the hope that it would become a little stronger. It didn't. "But I hear Florida is terrible for humidity, mosquitoes, common people…you should visit Paris, Miss Waldorf, for all it is cold. The sons of the late lamented Mr Worth dash here, there and everywhere, dreaming bigger, better to keep the brand alive. One wants huge skirts, one wants slender cuts. Both would be honoured to have you in their salon."

"Sometimes I use Worth," Blair demurred. "Sometimes I think there's nothing better than a good clean American cut for an American girl."

He laughed. "Then you would never make a very good princess."

"She is a princess of fashion," Asher put in kindly. "And the princess of us New Yorkers. That Gamesome Gallant fellow can devote an entire column to Miss Waldorf's graces, and the public will gobble it up like sugared almonds at a wedding."

"Then the Parisians would fall to their knees and worship her."

Caught between two men who seemed torn between charming her and outdoing each other, Blair struck her spoon gently against her water glass. "My mother lives in Paris." Her mother, the woman who had fled when she'd realised her daughter was anything but snow white. "I haven't seen her for a long time now. There are so many things I wish to say to her." Thing about pirates in petticoats. Things about Blair making choices for herself now, and that being what Daddy would've wanted. He hadn't been a traditionalist like her mother, far from it. He had taught her about wine and horses, bread and circuses, educated her so her worth was more than beauty alone. "Perhaps Your Highness is right. Perhaps I should visit Paris again."

Beneath the table, Asher reached for her hand. She stroked the spot where she'd jabbed him by way of an apology.

Being a prince, Louis knew how to be delicate. "At our last meeting, I sensed there was…an anchor, shall we say, holding you down in New York. That anchor no longer exists, I take it?"

"The anchor hasn't expired." Asher's grip was firm, comforting. "But the reason is not in New York, and I am. If I go to Paris, I doubt it will affect him overmuch."

"Ah."

"Indeed."

They all three drank and wished for something stronger.

"I hope you will visit my country one day." He was addressing them both now, extending a friendly rather than a royal invitation. "The casinos are second to none if you have a steady hand and a straight face."

Said Asher wryly, "There is no man as straight as I."

Blair disguised her snort of laughter with a sneeze.

_**~#~**_

"I beg you to see reason."

"Reason? You? And beg, you?"

They were at a stalemate, with Damien, an undecided piece, smoking in the background and dictating something to his man. Jenny tried to square up to Chuck, despite the difference in height, despite the power she had over him and he over her.

"You're tumbling into sin and shame and you don't even know it."

"That's rich, coming from you." She twined her fingers around her pearl necklaces. "You've sinned, and you've shamed yourself and me."

"I am married to you," Chuck retorted. "And I wish to be married to Blair, and in either eventuality I'll be growing old with someone. Mistresses don't grow old and stay mistresses, not when the bloom is off them, not when their allure fades. He may even discard you while you're still young, and where will you go then? You will have no money, no means of support. No one will marry you who knows what you are, and believe me, they will delve into your past and find what you truly are before long too." He pushed a hand agitatedly back through his hair, flattening it to his scalp; Jenny could smell the scent of his pomade, a scent that had become familiar to her over the past months.

This made her snap at him. "What other choice do I have? You're going to divorce me and disgrace me anyway, and never mind the truth about your precious Blair. People will say what I say is sour grapes and believe whatever excuse you give for casting me off. I have no more cards to play."

"Wait for me to sort things out. You can leave me then, and take your whining and your selfishness and a sum of my money to set you up somewhere."

"Why do you even care?"

His eyes were soft, and for a moment she hoped. "Because you're blind," he said, trashing the dream. "The world you're looking for only exists from the outside. The only reason I survive in it is because I always knew it was empty."

"And she will fill you up." Jenny vented her sadness as spite. "There will be something inside the house for you, while I remain outside, staring at you both through the window. Maybe I'll marry one day and win a place on the outskirts of society, but I'll never again be welcome at the Waldorf-Astoria, not the first-the-worst Mrs Bass. Where does that leave me? Outside the window again, staring at you both. I'd rather go away with the prince. I'd rather go to a place where no one knows me or you. I'd rather be forgotten about than snubbed."

Chuck sighed. "We've never been kind to you, have we?"

"I was never kind to you. I heartily hate you both. I hope you learn to loathe each other more with every passing day. I hope your children have other men's faces."

But her husband refused to be cruel in return, apparently unfeeling to the last. He swept her a bow, his spine straight but his mouth all screwed up: there was elation, and distrust, and regret. None of it was for her. "Goodbye, Jenny. Good luck."

She'd wanted him for so hard and so long.

Instead of melting her, that had made her hard.

They had made her hard.

"Your Highness." Her dress swerved as sheashayed to his side, laid her cheek upon his shoulder, pouted.

"A pretty performance." He paid her the compliment of turning away from his dictation and pinching her cheek, more like a jolly uncle than a lover, but more a lover than any Jenny had had. She nipped his thumb, and he laughed. "Shall we buy you something pretty as a reward?"

"Diamonds," she replied. "I'm tired of emeralds."

Damien read her mind, and twisted first her wedding band and then her engagement ring off that significant finger. There was a strip of pale skin beneath, but no other sign that Chuck Bass and Jenny Humphrey had been anything but the fantasy of a maid – a nothing of a ladies' maid lying in an attic bedroom with the fashion papers spread all around her, little knowing that life beneath the eaves both hating and admiring her mistress was the safest and happiest she would ever be.

Certainly no one in society would ever speak of her again.

"We'll pick some up in Paris," Damien promised.

Jenny smiled, picked up the stub of his _figurado_ cigar and breathed in its dangerous stench.

* * *

><p><strong><em>So many of you message me about running Jenny over with a train or carriage, or having Dorota assassinate her - your ideas never fail to tempt me and make me giggle. Maybe you'll think a little more kindly of her after this? Maybe you won't? I'd be interested to know. Thanks to: <em>Guest #1, Laura, Guest #2, Guest #3, BellaB2010, Guest #4, Trosev, jojo . 4ever, Guest #5, alissa-jackie, nIGHTSrAVEN47, teddy bear, thegoodgossipgirl, chuckandblair, sassy991, odyjha, Guest #6, Molly Dooker _(the Lolita quote was very beautiful and very fitting)_, CameronM201 _(thank you for reviewing so many of my fics and brightening my day)_, ggloverxx19 _and_ jamieerin. _I'm firmly convinced__ that all of you are kinder and more eloquent than I could ever be._  
><strong>


	20. The End

**19. The End**

"The Glass Ball," Asher sighed, kid-wrapped fingers fluttering over his heart as if he couldn't quite bear the excitement. Blair doubted it was excitement alone; the young journalist liked to heat a spoonful of something syrup-coloured over a flame and swallow it down before he went out of an evening. It wasn't that she didn't dare ask, but that she would be concerned for him and didn't want to be. Asher could take care of himself. Blair would recognise the look of one balancing on the edge of a precipice, and he didn't have it. He was handsome, bright and gay, and she was on his arm that evening.

"My last ball."

"Your last ball in New York, not forever."

"Not forever, no. But my last ball in New York for some time."

"How fitting, then, that it should be the Glass Ball." He wrapped her hand around one champagne flute and his around another, both seized from a passing waiter with other recipients in mind. "You remind me of glass yourself."

Blair took a sip, then discreetly spat out a rose petal that had been added to her drink. "And why is that?"

"Stained," he replied, and winced as she stamped on his foot – again, ever so discreetly.

The Glass Ball was a Field family tradition, the original Mr Field a by-blow of some Vanderbilt who'd made good in the steel industry. When he'd died, knee deep in ladies of the night, his cool English widow had built an enormous house with enormous windows on the furthest corner of Fifth Avenue, perhaps to suggest to the gossips that those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. As such, no one spoke of her husband in anything but the fondest and most respectful terms when they attended the Glass Ball thrown in his memory every year. Mrs Field was now Mrs Wickes, in her mid-forties but still strikingly attractive, with pale blonde hair, pale blue eyes and a twenty four year old husband to boot.

She was something of a legend.

"Mr Hornsby." Mrs Wickes glided up to them, a loop of aquamarines spanning her small throat. "Always a pleasure. I do hope your friend the Gamesome Gallant plans to give our little party the praise it deserves." Her gaze flicked to Blair, who was holding her own with layers of light gold tissue covering her décolleté and arms. "Welcome, Miss Waldorf. I don't believe I've seen you since I was wed." She self-consciously touched her coiffure, as if still veiled. "It's such a shame your mother was forced to be abroad for my wedding to Mr Wickes, I could've put her flair for fashion to good use. I'm glad to see you've inherited that talent, however."

"Thank you, Mrs Wickes."

"I shall tell her so in my next letter."

"I may reach her before your letter does." They spent a few minutes discussing Blair's travel plans and complimenting one another further. It was nothing more than niceties, nothing enjoyable, but maybe Blair had grown too used to repartee with Chuck, with Serena, even with Dan. And speaking of Dan…

"Humphrey?"

His dark hair was slicked back, his cheekbones prominent, his bowtie as dazzlingly white as the shirt underneath.

"B!"

And beside him was Serena, her dress apparently made from silver fish scales, dozens of gauzy ovals overlapping, spilling onto the floor and spreading around her feet. They flashed when she moved, as real scales would, and positively blazed as she flung herself the few feet into Blair's arms. Blair staggered, perplexed – she didn't know when her friend had returned from Palm Beach, and she certainly didn't know why. Dan and Serena were going to go away together, weren't they? She'd given her blessing. She'd shed her tears. She'd spitefully imagined the day her friend would realise what a terrible mistake she'd made and rush back to Park Avenue where she belonged. Now she felt the cold clasp of Serena's three strand necklace beneath her fingers, which was wonderful and confusing, both at the same time.

"What are you doing here?"

"Chuck loaned us the Bass car, we took the train shortly after you did."

"You didn't answer my question."

"I was worried about you, of course. Dorota told me you hadn't gone home –"

"And I don't intend to."

"And that the ducks were suffering without you."

Blair flinched. She'd never stopped to consider Dorota, patient, loyal, slightly fearsome Dorota. Would she accompany her to Paris? Was it right of Blair to ask her? What would become of those ducks when she'd gone, the ducks in _her_ duck pond, in _her_ Central Park?

Enough. She was a pirate in petticoats, she could have ducks in every port if she wanted them. She had every right to ask, and the maid could go or stay as she pleased. She'd take what she could with her overseas, and refuse to mourn what she left behind. There would be new delights, new friendships, new adventures.

A new future to replace the old.

"Dorota and the ducks will do very well without me," she said quietly. "If she wishes to stay in New York, I'll make arrangements for her. If she wishes to come with me to Paris, then Asher and I will look for two berths on a steamer."

Serena's mouth fell open. "Paris, B? Your mother?"

"Paris, S. Something new, whether Mother wants to be involved or not."

"Then I'm happy for you."

"You're not."

"No, I'm not."

Dan cleared his throat and withdrew. Asher dallied a moment or two, but eventually the glares of the two women wore him down, and he retreated. One hand dipped into his pocket and surreptitiously removed his notebook. The ladies moved away then too, secreting themselves in a translucently curtained alcove which did nothing to disguise either their forms or identities. The gorgeous setting of the Glass Ball was not at all conducive to secrecy.

"This is no way to grow up, Blair. This is the path which leads you right back where you started." The scales on Serena's dress tumbled down her arms to caress the frills on her long white gloves. "Yet again, you've seen a way out of being vulnerable that will only hurt you in the end. There is such value to knowing when to be vulnerable, but you shy away from it as if feelings have teeth and will bite you. You made it seem as if you planned to wait for Chuck, to put yourself to good use in the interim. Now you're running away to France?"

"I'm not running away," Blair insisted. "My mother…my mother is the reason for everything. I want to go to her and tell her I will marry who I choose and love who I like so she can hate me to my face. I'm sick of being afraid of her shadow."

"You were afraid," her friend countered. "And then you weren't, and now you are again. You were fearless when she went away and you were thwarting Chuck and then realising you'd loved him all along, and now you're afraid that he'll stay with Jenny and won't come to you. You're afraid you've asked too much of him, and you'd rather leave than be left. You must always be the one to decide, mustn't you? You must always be powerful."

"You're quite wrong. I'm not frightened of anything."

"You're frightened of everything!"

"Then why am I going to see my mother after all this time?"

Serena's answer was perfectly pitched and wicked, for she knew Blair all too well. "Because you're frightened no one will ever love you for you, you alone, not unobtainable you with impediments in the way. A beautiful heiress is the paragon of desirability to everyone but you. You throw up mountains in your own way: your mother, and Jenny, and this foolish idea that binding yourself to another person will mean you're one identity, not two."

"Is that not the case with you and Dan?"

"No. We're two people who lift each other's spirits, we don't each bring a single arm and a leg and half a heart to our partnership." She softened, breathing slowly and ostensibly preventing herself from saying something sharp again. "A real pirate would stay and ride out this storm. A pirate queen would go down with her ship, and let neither waves nor mutineers be her master."

Blair nearly snorted. "Chuck would never buffet my ship. He wants nothing but smooth sailing."

"He's a man. If you're a pirate for him, you can bet anything he'll buffet your ship. If you're gentle when you want to be and fierce when want to be, true to yourself, then he'll never tire of you. He'll love you for you alone."

Asher had finished chatting to the Thorpe girl and was standing by Dan, attempting to follow the conversation.

"Do you read lips?" He inquired.

"No."

"Good skill to cultivate, Humphrey, a writer like you."

"I've been intending to speak to you on that subject."

"Oh?"

"You could sound more interested."

"You could express yourself more quickly."

Dan was inclined to fidget, unused to being so pressed and tucked and starched and buffed, ill at ease with the diamond cufflinks Serena had deemed more suitable than glass. He twirled one around with his thumb and forefinger. "It appears as though you've lost your foreign correspondent now Blair is home."

"And when she goes to France, she may choose to become Gossip Girl again."

"I don't want her to do that."

"Why? Are you after her job?"

"Yes."

Ashe's eyebrows shot so far up his forehead they looked like to crawl off his skull altogether. "Mr Humphrey, you do surprise me. I heard you were sick of the _beau monde_ and the artfulness of our ladies and insincerity of our promises and taste of our tea. I heard you were off to join the natives."

"Serena and I intend to travel," Dan replied stiffly. "In far off climes, yes, but in Europe and England too."

"Gossip Girl in Great Britain," the Gamesome Gallant mused. "You can't keep a goddess like Miss van der Woodsen hidden away from society forever, I suppose. Those of her own class will sniff her out the moment you arrive at Dover, and you'll be at court before you know it. Gossip Girl being presented to royalty…" He nudged Dan companionably with his elbow. "Do you know, I rather like that."

"Does that mean you'll take me on?"

"Perhaps."

"Perhaps what?"

"Perhaps when this sticky business of Paris and independent women and star-crossed gentlemen is over. Perhaps then I'll consider you, although…"

"Although what?"

"Although you aren't half as lovely as my last correspondent." He turned back to contemplation of the ladies.

"I'm going to Paris, S. Come Hell or high water."

"Then I guess my wedding will just have to wait until you're back again."

Blair laid her hand against her dear friend's cheek, stretching up on her toes to plant a kiss on her brow. "I know you don't approve, but this is something I have to do. I have to prove myself to myself, and prove myself to the rest of the world as a consequence. I wish you happy on your engagement, even if I was petty about it before."

"Thank you. Bring me back something pretty."

_**~#~**_

It wasn't the Bass car, but the private carriage on the train was certainly opulent – not so opulent, however, that Chuck was allowed his own lounge. That honour went to three younger ladies who insisted on peering around the door at him and breaking into fits of giggles. The cherubs on the ceiling gazed down at him but didn't seem sympathetic, and the gilded mouldings glowed unobtrusively. There Chuck sat, in the lap of luxury, wracking his brains as to what to do, what to say, lighting one ciggie after another and breathing in only once before crumbling it to ashes. There was a headache building behind his eye sockets.

He knew Jenny's unexpected departure should've pleased him, and that it would make their divorce far easier. But, he supposed, it showed how much he'd changed that he actually cared about her going. He'd needed her to be safe, even at the risk of putting Blair off a little while longer. God, how must that have looked to her? Chuck dropped his head into his hands.

"Goddamn it."

"Temper, temper."

She slid onto the Moroccan leather upholstered banquette beside him, the possessor of the voice he'd never expected to hear again. Through his splayed fingers, he could see the toes of her shoes – diamond studded buckles, a ridiculous choice for travelling – the hem of her gown – froths of black lace and frills, easily snagged on the panelling – and a hint of red stocking – no issue with that, other than the fact she was a whore.

"Hello, Chuck," said Georgina Sparks, her smile catlike and her eyes brilliant.

Chuck sat upright and tried not to lean away from her. Georgina Sparks was a widow twice over, with a son she saw rarely and thought of less. Husband number three had wisely chosen to sign over his fortune and take up residence with the child in the country, lest something noxious accidentally find its way into his bisque. Georgina was sugar sweet until the moment the papers were signed and she was legally entitled to something. Thereafter, she was so twisted that if the body mirrored the mind, her head would be able to perform a full three hundred and sixty degree revolution.

"Georgina." He wasn't sure how to address her, what her husband's name was or where she'd sprung from. Georgina was another debutante from Blair and Serena's year, what was called second class: she couldn't snare a husband with both money and looks, so she'd settled for money and done well for herself.

First class was love, or at least mutual handsomeness, and wealth.

Second class was wealth.

Third was love.

His attachment to Blair would've been considered less than third class.

"What are you doing so far from your wife's apron strings? Last I heard, you weren't even permitted to take a fishing trip without her in tow."

"Last I heard, you were still playing the Borgia with your medicine chest, and your husband was hiding under a rock somewhere in Vermont and having his food tasted by a hick who lives in a tree."

"Vanessa is a locally trained healer, as a matter of fact."

"Is that so."

"Indeed it is."

"Notice how my inflection didn't change at the end: not a question."

She reeked of the city, of sex and sleaze and good fortune in amassing a fortune. He had no doubt she would taste of foie gras and French perfume if licked, and that even such a salacious act in full view of the giggling girls wouldn't be enough for her. Georgina _was_ New York, a big name with a big appetite, no privacy and no intimacy required. She was what he'd warned Jenny about, empty within, exquisite without. If Chuck stayed in his seat for the remainder of the journey, he'd offer himself to Blair as a way out of that world: even after all she'd said on the subject, he couldn't be sure he was sincere. He had first truly seen her that night at the opera, innocent fingers between innocent thighs, but even that had been in public. Even then she'd been in a gorgeous gown, even then she'd returned to her box with her no expression on her perfect porcelain face.

"It's a shame." Georgina's voice cut neatly through his tangled thoughts. "I was rooting for the two of you."

"What?"

"You and the little wife, of course. Anyone would be better than Our Lady Queen of Heaven." She wrinkled her nose. "The thing with Blair is that's she flawless, irritatingly so."

"She's not."

"Oh no?"

"'My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun'," Chuck quoted. "'Coral is far more red than her lips' red'."

"Don't say her breasts are dun, I can't bear it. I thought you were long done with her breasts, anyway?"

He lit his final cigarette and breathed deeply of the fumes that had so intoxicated him not so long ago. "Her breasts are far from dun, as a matter of fact – but my point is that she isn't flawless, and that's perhaps why I'm not done with her. You, Georgie…" His gaze swept the black widow, from well-appointed hat to well-appointed heel. "You're the very model of a thrice married woman who's never been in love. Blair was born with everything and wants none of it. Our Lady Queen of Heaven is tired of her throne in the clouds."

Georgina rolled her eyes upward to the painted cherubs. "God save me from waxing lyrical on the subject of love."

"I hope God does save you; after all, nobody else will."

This appeared to please her. "Cards?"

"Why not."

"I could tell you some very naughty secrets about Blair while we play," she offered, leading him to a small square table in the corner of the lounge, which was actually appointed like a lounge and whose false fireplace and many carriage clocks didn't match the rows of padded benches. "I heard she lost her virginity to her chauffeur on the way to Lissy Archer's engagement party."

It was a fact both horrid and amusing that, after such trouble to preserve Blair's reputation and keep it unblemished, people would still curtsey to her face and whisper behind her back. Extremes were scandalous, and to some extreme morality was just as scandalous as extreme depravity.

Gossip would always play its part in the scandalous lives of Manhattan's elite.

"She doesn't have a chauffeur," Chuck said coolly. "I'll deal."

_**~#~**_

Jenny walked along the shoreline with her bathing suit cut high, almost to her hipbones, her ring finger curiously light and her spirit light to match it. The sand was gritty beneath her feet and between her teeth, and there was no one on the beach to impress with her rolled down stockings, least of all the censor. She'd miss Florida, she decided, the climate and the luxurious hotel and Mrs Smelt and Sir Hugo Peverell and the other cronies she'd picked up during her stay. Why, she wasn't even eighteen and she'd achieved this much. Her mother Alison would never achieve this much.

Damien had recommended this walk, sent it on a card with that day's flowers. A maid-of-all-guests had brought her a bouquet of snapdragons from the hotel's hothouse, violent pink and white. Elise had placed them reverently on the nightstand, and Jenny had ordered her costume rinsed and dried by the time she got back from breakfast.

She'd walked the stretch for an hour or so when the wind changed, and it became cold. Jenny retrieved her wrap from beside the hut where loungers were rented and lemonade was poured, pulling it around her shoulders as she strolled back up to the road. The pretty vista of the hotel's frontage rose up before her, and then she was up the steps and inside, the concierge smiling his pleasure as was expected upon seeing such a valuable – if not valued – guest. The elevator was already occupied by an elderly couple who were aghast at Jenny's beachwear, but that mattered not. She wanted a hot bath with rose attar in the water, and then she wanted to dress in nothing but a shirtwaist and stockings and go to Damien just like that.

The door of her room opened with a muted, obsequious click, and Jenny Bass shrieked and rushed forward, slamming it shut behind her.

Her vanity was bare, her bed neatly made. Her trunks and presses were absent from their places beneath the windows, the French doors were closed. In the midst of all this nothingness stood Wrigley, a black velvet box between his palms. Jenny knew then that it was all gone: clothes, jewels, money, all. She'd been played for a fool by a prince, Damien, who'd used her inside and out and then left her behind as he moved on to the next fashionable locale, the next gullible female. How could she not have seen it? He'd chosen her, a married woman, so she couldn't share her shame without destroying herself in the process. He'd committed no crimes, there was nothing to accuse him of; she'd given up her engagement ring and her husband, she was the one at fault here. Jenny felt very old and tired indeed. Women always came last. That was how the game was played, and that was how the game was lost.

"Mrs Bass." Wrigley was deferential, even to the last.

"Don't bother making excuses." The furniture was, blessedly, still in place, and she sank down onto an ottoman. "I'm sure you get tired of repeating them to girls like me."

"There are so many."

"And now Blair has her revenge."

"Beg pardon?"

Jenny fixed her gaze upon him, feral and yet listless. "I was the maid of the most selfish girl in Manhattan. She had all the gowns, all the pretty things, she was invited to every party and it only took a glimpse of her for most boys to fall in love. Her deepest secret – doesn't everyone have one? – was that the boy she loved was unsuitable, and so she'd turned him away. He came back a man of substance, and he made me a lady to torture her. I should've seen it coming that he'd come to care for her again, everyone else did. I wrecked them." She bared her little teeth in a frightening smile. "He married me so I wouldn't tell what a whore she'd been for him, and still he loved her, no matter how I tried, and then I left him."

"Mr Bass."

"And now Miss Waldorf has her revenge, me back in my proper place and Chuck ready to offer her the world. As with all things relating to her, she didn't even have to do it herself."

Wrigley's shirtfront was smooth, his expression not so much. "I saved you this." He flipped the lid to reveal the heavy collar of emeralds matching Jenny's now absent ring, very nearly useless as it was too bespoke to take to the jewellers. "You can sell off the stones one by one if you're in difficulty, and then the gold clasps, and then the settings."

"I was born in difficulty," she retorted. "What will you do now, follow after him and organise this charade all over again?"

He only nodded.

"Then I guess I'll have to find my own way home."

Ivy's heart was drumming against her ribs so, Nate must be able to feel it through his jacket. He didn't seem embarrassed, however, and bent his head once again to hers. Kissing him made her knees weak, so much so that she had to grip his elbows to stay upright, something else she worried might put him off her. She didn't need to, of course, for Nate was a consummate gentleman, and actually found the idea of a woman swooning in his arms rather pleasing. He dared to brush a lock of caramel coloured hair back behind his companion's ear. She blinked up at him, oh so innocent and oh so seductive, retreating behind lowered eyelashes.

"Miss Rhodes!"

The masquerading maid almost cursed, although she pivoted on the spot to face Jenny with a smile. Nate's touch at the base of her spine helped somewhat, applying only gentle pressure.

"Mrs Bass," she greeted the interloper. "Or is it Miss Humphrey again?"

"May I have a word with you? In private?" Jenny was in dishabille, only a wrap over her bathing suit and stockings. She disregarded Nate entirely, and he was too polite to comment on it. Ivy hated her for interrupting the first of hopefully many perfect moments; she wanted to tell him so, that that moment had been perfect, but her tongue was suddenly too large for her mouth.

"Forgive me, Mr Archibald."

He came round to stand between they two, and bent gallantly to kiss her fingertips. The courtly gesture was far more erotic than expected, sweeping through Ivy to her toes and making her even more reluctant to go with Jenny. Still, go she did, as Jenny knew that she was not Charlotte Rhodes and could make trouble if refused.

"What?" She asked bluntly when they were out of sight behind the curve of a column.

"I need money," was the surprising response. "You give me enough the train fare to New York, I give you this." A familiar emerald necklace was extracted from the neck of her costume, dripping off her palm and dangling in the air. Ivy watched it sparkle shrewdly, refusing to be taken in by the luxury and loveliness.

"You won't change anything by going back," she warned. "You won't stop their being together."

"Nothing can stop that now," Jenny replied bitterly. "But New York is my home too. If I can't find my feet there, then I'll go to my family in Brooklyn. If they don't want me, I'll beg the train fare from California and go west, and you'll never hear of me again."

"I'd rather not have heard of you in the first place."

"This isn't about like or dislike. This is business."

Ivy sucked in her cheeks. "Miss van der Woodsen left me enough to live comfortably for a few months." She'd also wished her well, and bade her call on her mother if matters didn't work out and she needed her old job again. "I have enough to get you to New York, and I suppose it's a fair trade if this can be broken down and sold."

"Do we have a deal, then?"

"Not quite." And, one former alley cat to another, she hooked her foot behind Jenny's skinny knee and sent her sprawling. "If you cause trouble in New York, if an engagement or wedding doesn't go as it should and it's your fault, I'll come for you."

Stiffly, Jenny picked herself up. She extended her hand as if nothing had happened. "Do we have a deal, then?"

They shook, and Ivy grinned.

"Deal."

* * *

><p><strong><em>Thanks to:<em> ****abelard, aliceeeebeth, thegoodgossipgirl, Nikki999, fanny0997, sassy991, CameronM201, Trosev, Bcw, Vero, Stella296, Erin, SaturnineSunshine, alissa-jackie, thepluot, Vamp-by-Night, Molly Dooker, nIGHTSrAVEN47, Guest, L, lovetvtoomuchxo, odyjha _and_ Amber.**


	21. Agony & Hope

**20. Agony & Hope**

Indecorous remarks had been made at the Glass Ball about Blair Waldorf's escort, Asher Hornsby, about Blair Waldorf's conversation with Mrs Wickes, about Blair Waldorf's best friend, Serena van der Woodsen. Blair Waldorf herself was generally smiled upon that evening, not to know she was being discussed on the railroad and in the embassy in Paris and in her own pantry. It was a day later, her champagne headache was gone, and she was pressing every ounce of her weight down on a trunk lid to try and force it shut. What a spectacle her bedroom was, its pretty blue walls stripped of her favourite paintings and her bearskin rug gone from the floor. Books, clothes and jewellery lay everywhere. She was in grave danger of becoming disorganised.

But Blair was headache-free, determined. She knew what she wanted, and she was going to get it.

The space held so many memories. Here was the room she'd been brought hours after being born, washed and dried and pink and naïve. Here was the room she'd been nursed and taught her ABCs and arithmetic. Here was the room where she'd been a girl, and here was the room where she'd become a woman. She wouldn't be away from it forever, but she'd miss it all the same.

Dorota crept in, trying to avoid making a sound and disturbing her mistress' reverie. When Blair glanced up, however, it was not with an admonishment or an order in Polish. "I'm sorry you decided not to come with me," she said. "Promise you'll write if you change your mind."

"I will write," the maid replied carefully. "Or if I would like to surprise you, I will write to Mr Hornsby, who will arrange everything."

"Precisely."

"I have a leaving gift for you, Miss Blair."

It was in a sleek leather case, and Blair immediately suspected jewellery. Something of her mother's, perhaps, that had been locked away? One of the pieces she herself had given her former nurse, a coral necklace for her birthday, a diamond pin for Christmas? Deciding she would be delighted, whatever it was, the New York royal who did not 'do' hand-me-downs thanked Dorota as she took the box from her and readied herself to thank her again once the trinket was on display.

This parting present was no bauble, however. Inside the case, nestled in a velvet recess, was a little pearl-handled pistol. Blair loved it on sight, and couldn't think why. It was only just bigger than her palm and polished to a high shine; she could see her face reflected back in the barrel. "Where on earth did you get this?" Her fingers reached out automatically to stroke the cool metal, more than appreciating such refinement that could be so deadly – rather like Blair herself.

"Mr Harold."

"Daddy?"

"For your twenty-first birthday, Mr Harold ordered this. He hoped to teach you how to take care of yourself, but he will not be in Paris to take care of you, and I will not be in Paris to take care of you. You must be brave and take care of yourself…and you must promise, Miss Blair, not to shoot Miss Eleanor."

Blair let out a sound that was halfway to being a laugh, dropping the box to her bed and wrapping her arms around her maid. Dorota decided that Miss Blair definitely wasn't ready to be without her if she was tossing around live firearms like they were throw pillows, but at least she was happy. Her glow was muted, like candlelight, however, and her voice was small. "You remember everything I said? Everything I asked you to say?"

"Yes."

"Say it back to me."

"'Just because we can't be together doesn't mean I won't love you'. I say that to Mister Chuck, and give him your most recent address."

"Thank you, Dorota."

"Thank you, Miss Blair."

They'd jointly conspired to dress her fit for foreign travel, in a navy blue shirtwaist with white satin edging and a sensibly wide skirt. There was a woven straw hat with matching trim atop her shockingly loose – but neatly brushed – hair, and the addition of a jaunty green neckerchief had, of course, been Asher's idea. He had the reputation of always being on time unless a place was not worth being and, as a compliment to his friend, had arrived ten minutes early with the sputtering dragon of a motorcar someone had lent him to get them to the waterfront in style. Blair rolled her eyes as he tutted and tugged at her scarf so the knot was to one side, but she was just as glad and sad in his presence as she had been upon receipt of Dorota's gift.

He kissed her lips, since Asher always had to be kissing someone somewhere. "Out you go, darling girl. Out into the wide world."

"Who will bring down the cases?"

"You have servants hiding in this warren of a house, you know. A male one let me in, as a matter of fact. Hobnobbing with the likes of Little J Humphrey has made you forget that the help are meant to be behind the scenes, not causing scenes on the arm of your one true love."

"He's not my…well, I suppose he is."

"No point arguing about that now."

"But you must stop talking like that, it's overblown and British and I won't have it."

"The British are in this season, did no one tell you?" His brows were manicured, as were his nails. They waggled. "Paris is over, New York is dead."

"If New York never sleeps, it can hardly die."

"It'll be dead without you, though."

Blair met Asher's look with a sense of near astonishment at his being sincere. Intelligence and good humour came to him as naturally as breathing, he saw the world around him for what it was and it amused him. What she'd never really let herself appreciate was how lonely he was. Few people knew he was the Gamesome Gallant, so much more than a mere journalist, and even fewer were aware of his more secret, more dangerous fascination. People assumed he was a consummate bachelor, too busy for a bride. The unhappy truth was that Asher would never be able to love whom he chose without being ridiculed, persecuted, abused; he'd devoted that intelligence, that good humour and his time to ensuring Blair could be with the man of her choosing, and she'd thrown his wretched circumstances into sharp relief by choosing herself over even the person she loved most in the world. She took his hand.

"One day," Blair promised. "I will have a home of my own, and there will be a place for you. You'll do whatever you want there, be with whomever you want, and none of my friends and no one in my employ will ever or call you names. I will make a new world if I have to, if it means things will be fair and right."

"Dearest, darling Blair." This time, his kiss landed on her forehead, lighter than the brush of a butterfly's wing. "Our world will never be fair. It's too beautiful for that, you as a beauty should realise: loveliness is cruel enough not to favour everyone, and so fairness is irrelevant. I'm not a martyr. I'll live my lies loudly and my life quietly rather than lose everything."

"It's not fragile, our world. Not like the Glass Ball."

"No. But one day people better and braver than us will raze it to the ground, and there'll be another world beyond its borders. That one, perhaps, will be fair."

A tear, the first of many, slipped down her cheek. "I love you too. As well as him."

"I love him too," said Asher, wiping it away. "As well as you."

There didn't seem to be anything more to say after that, and two manservants were rung for and carried Blair's things down to the cart which would follow the car in silence. Their wages would be paid, even though they'd have no one to wait on.

As the motorcar roared and puffed into life, Asher surprised Blair by chuckling and shaking his head. "Don't cry for me, la belle Waldorf. You're an inspiration to us all with these abnormal antics and all this running around proving yourself and defying your class. Inspirational ladies don't cry, the Book of Seamstress' Verses says so."

"And what have I inspired you to do?"

"Why, to drive very, very fast."

_**~#~**_

Someone wrapped in a gentlemen's coat was riding the rails from Palm Beach to New York. She sat at the bar and drank anything, and hissed at anyone who tried to speak to her.

She didn't have a name.

She couldn't honestly claim to deserve one.

_**~#~**_

Asher had to give Dorota a small quantity of his favourite narcotic before she'd stop sobbing and hiccupping by turns. He opted to walk home after dropping off his precious package, who'd refused an escort through the bustling crowds, up the gangplank and onto the ship itself, not once but twice. Blair's maid wasn't in a fit state to drive and nor did she have the skill, but Graham Collins was a colleague of Asher's and, more importantly, of his persuasion. Dorota would get home safely, and Asher could walk alone and spend some much needed time organising his thoughts. This week's column was half done, and he'd find some restaurant to serve him cutlets for dinner. There were oranges in the fruit bowl, beneath a stack of yellowing newspapers, he'd have one of those to tide him over. A clove cigarette would be welcome, and maybe the aforementioned Graham Collins too, if he happened to pass by.

Humphrey would need an answer soon.

How bothersome.

Sighing at the unsolicited cheek of that stubble-chinned man-child Dan, Asher spurned the elevator to climb the endless flights of stairs to what he liked to call his garret. There were several spectacular vintage umbrellas in the hat stand to the left of the front door, and Chuck Bass was occupying the wingback chair in the main room.

"I've had dreams like this." Asher was in two minds about removing the rusty sword concealed inside one of the umbrellas. "But usually, you have no clothes on."

"Mr Hornsby."

"Mr Bass. Aren't we past all this now?"

"No."

"Fair enough." He took a seat on the couch and did indeed light a clove cigarette, excitement fizzing in the pit of his stomach. How was it that Blair managed to improve his quality of life without even lifting a finger? "Purple suits you." Crossing his legs, Asher studied the lavender cuffs peeping from beneath his guest's greatcoat. "Now, would you like an orange, or would you like to tell me what you're doing in my apartment? Your hair is too long, by the way." _And very_, _very_ _alluring_. _I like a man with a touch of the poet_.

"I've been to Blair's house."

"And left with no Blair, I take it."

"Where is she?"

Asher came very close to wriggling with delight. This was too much, the dramatic entrance of the hero at what everyone was sure was the final curtain. Far be it from him to wreck a romance…but, for all her admirable qualities, Blair had an infuriating habit of extraordinary circumstances just happening to fall into her lap. Was he, Asher, not entitled to some fun? Especially if she was going off to Paris. Even more so if Chuck planned to rush to the rescue, and they were going to get married and have babies and do everything properly.

"I know you know."

"I know I know too, Mr Bass. You're the only one who doesn't."

Chuck sighed. He looked tired, and ever so rakish. "I'm not in the mood to play games." How did such a rumpled man manage to be twirling such an immaculate hat between his hands? That was something worth knowing. "Not that I'd have to with you, you're so goddamn transparent."

"You charmer."

"Don't be coy."

"Me? Coy? I believe I was stating the obvious: I know where Blair is, and you don't. You want to know where she is, and I won't confess unless you give me what I want. I must warn you, by the way, that this information has a time limit. She'll shortly be in transit, and then neither of us will know where she is." He stubbed out his cigarette on an old clipping of his column. "So the only question which remains, excepting where Blair is, is whether you're man enough to do what you must in the time you've been given."

"Man enough?" Chuck was incredulous. "Do you really think I've never kissed a guy before?"

"No? Then I am pleasantly surprised."

They were of a height when they stood, which Asher supposed would make the process easier, but Chuck was imposing. He appeared to swallow the space around him, drawing it into the darkness of his gaze. No wonder Blair was running away to France, since the Gamesome Gallant could barely contain himself – _and_ they hadn't even kissed. As he did several times a week, Asher wondered whether what 'normal' couples actually got up to in bed together could live up to his own escapades. In this case, he concluded that being with Chuck Bass probably equalled the experience. Poor Blair probably went off like a rocket in the first few moments, what with those eyes, and those hands, and the warm, musky scent of that cologne…

"I apologise for the dog hairs."

"What?"

"On my sleeve. Monkey was ecstatic to be home." He was drawling each word, drinking Asher in. Feeling like an aroused fly being advanced on by a highly attractive spider, Asher gulped. The functioning part of his brain inquired as to what game the legendary Mr Bass was playing. The rest of it was quite incoherent.

Slowly and very deliberately, Chuck pressed his mouth to Asher's, corner to corner, trying neither to move nor blink nor evoke any response. He gripped the other man's wrists when his arms rose to do something or other to his hair, and shook Blair soundly in the happy world of his imagination. _The things I do for love_. At least it was more pleasant than kissing Jenny, than being violated by her – he'd spoken too soon, for there was the tongue. Gently, Chuck put Asher away from him, feeling mildly smug as the journalist continued to be cow-eyed and dreamy and required holding upright. With any luck, he wouldn't swoon.

"She's taking a steamer."

"To?"

"To Paris."

"Mr Hornsby, I could kiss you again."

"But will you?"

"No."

That brought Asher back to himself. "I have no idea how you're going to convince her to stay. She doesn't deny that she loves you or that you belong together, she doesn't hold it against you that you didn't stop her leaving Florida. God only knows what's going on inside her head."

"God," Chuck returned. "And me."

"Cocky, aren't you?"

And because he had no particularly wish to kiss him again but needed to reward him for his cooperation somehow, Chuck leaned in close to Asher's ear and whispered a few very important things on the subject of 'cocky'. The undesirable swooning fit very nearly happened then and there, but before it could Chuck was out the door and thundering down the stairs, and his satisfied customer had decided that Graham Collins was required that very minute, or else he was going to have to go and sit in a bathtub full of ice chips and picture his maiden aunts in their ill-fitting bathing costumes one traumatic Newport summer.

Chuck vaulted over the bannister. It seemed admissible.

_**~#~**_

Dinner was served, and for the first time in months, she ate and drank with great gusto, white wine with fish and chicken, red wine with beef and lamb.

Her stomach ached as she lay down in her bunk to sleep.

She didn't mind.

_**~#~**_

The fact that no young woman of gentle breeding should be left alone to board a ship was precisely why Blair had sent everyone away. She'd appropriated a porter to transport her luggage from A to B, and he trailed along in the wake of her practical skirt. With her suite of rooms and first class ticket, he'd probably be the last man between here and France who was surly and silent in her company, instead of grinning with a mouth full of even white teeth and leaping to obey her every whim. Blair rather liked that: he was one of the grey people of this fair, grey city, where it was so easy to forget that only the rich sparkled in jewel bright colours.

A man with a beard clipped to military measurements and gleaming brass buttons took her papers for inspection. "You may either board first or last, miss, as per your preference."

"Last, please."

He returned the documents and touched his hat. "The White Star Line wishes you a pleasant journey." Such was his training, he made no comment on her lack of retinue, taciturn companion or the absence of a wedding ring.

Blair had decided to wait because she wanted to watch. Tides of people swelled and ebbed past her vantage point, perched on the largest of her cases, eddying around the officials whose job it was to direct them to their berths. Some were ridiculously dressed for the occasion – the sister of the youngest Mrs Astor, for example, was going to visit her aunt in London, and her leaving outfit consisted of a billowy blouse and a bottle green skirt so tight she had to take four steps for every one of her husband's – and enormous hats and expensive suits with matching parasols were everywhere. In among the finery were more of the grey people of New York, those who for some reason thought things would be better on the other side of the Atlantic. Was Blair herself any better? Paris was the most fashionable locale in the world, after all, where everyone passed judgement on everyone else for everything imaginable, from the price of each individual piece of that day's ensemble to the presence or absence of a tiny dog with dyed fur tucked beneath one arm. That brought to mind Monkey, the raggedy, endearing creature who liked the way she smelled. He surely wouldn't fit underneath her arm…and then suddenly, a pair of paws thumped down on her knees and a pair of large brown eyes were adoring her from beneath shaggy eyebrows.

A lightning strike would've probably been less surprising.

"I thought you'd changed your perfume."

But then, she should've know better. Blair petted Monkey's head, keeping her own head bowed and her gaze fixed upon him. "All my other bottles of scent were packed, and I couldn't have gone without this morning."

"Indeed not."

"You can't stop me," she said to the dog, since she was still refusing to face his master. "You can't offer me an upgrade of what I used to be and expect me to tear up my ticket and stay here forever."

"No."

Blair raised her eyes, and the visual realisation that he was in her space, standing close by with his coat flapping and his throat bare and pink and vulnerable in the wind seemed to send an electric shock through her and out again, prompting poor Monkey to jump when she did. "You have to know how it felt when you stayed behind. When you stayed behind for Jenny…"

"I do," Chuck replied gravely. "But my defence is this: that the person who stayed behind for Jenny, to take care of Jenny, is the person I became because of you. I went to California and I became jaded and cruel because you'd hurt me, and when I came back I wanted to hurt you too. I overcompensated in the end, and chose to marry Jenny before asking your opinion because I was so desperate not to see you harmed. You should know that I respect your opinion, even though I didn't ask it, for which I apologise. I respect you. And I'm sorry for everything that followed, first standing outside your house and torturing us both and then trying to deceive you about my feelings in Palm Beach. And then that night…you told me to come for you when I couldn't live without you, Blair, but I've never been able to. I become noble to the point of stupidity or I become a nothing of a man. The fact is you're in my bones, you knit me together. I have to be where you are, even if it takes me a little time to get there because you take my spine with you when you go. I don't want you to stay here, if that's not what you want. I want you to be happy, however that's achieved."

"What do you want, Chuck?" She challenged him, subconsciously caressing the dog's silky ears.

"I want to be your something, even if that's not your husband. I'll be…" And he looked at her very squarely, his eyes black gold and firm and honest enough to make her chest ache. "I'll be your mistress."

Blair couldn't help it. Even though her teeth were gritted, she let out an irrepressible giggle. "My mistress?"

"Yes."

"Will you wear a negligee and pearls to bed?"

"Yes."

"And too much lipstick and rouge?"

"Yes."

"Will you dance with the fans like those ladies in the Montmartre?"

It was one step too far. "Don't play with me, Blair. You know better than that."

"Do I?" She blinked her innocence at him, doe-eyed, satin-skinned and not entirely truthful. "What I know is that I've spent a good deal of my life playing with you, and it wasn't fair on either of us."

"There's never just one of us to blame for past trespasses."

"I agree with that."

"But you're always the one fighting to bring me back to myself, whether you have to seduce me or chastise me to do it. This is who you are. I want to honour that. I want to fight for that." Chuck dared to assume the space beside her on the bench, and Blair jumped again. She was in a strange sort of place between being terrified and being electrified, and he wasn't helping matters. "And if you don't want a mistress in a negligee and pearls, then I'll be your friend. I'll be perpetually unsatisfied and possibly waste the rest of my life with girls who I pretend are you, but I'll be your friend. I'll even romp with Asher for you, though I hope to God he's got me out of his system after the events of today."

Blair didn't inquire further. "I doubt it," she countered, softly and quietly. "You're very hard to shake once some poor creature's fallen in love with you and given up all hope of ever wanting anyone else."

His hand stole hers, insinuated itself in her warm pocket and pulled out the tight little fist. She conceded not at all, refused to loosen her fingers or wrap them around his. He kissed them first, and then settled himself against the side of her throat, not caring who saw or knew them and that he was married and she wasn't. Her heart was beating so fast it seemed to reach out and touch his cheek, blood running hot while the flesh was still frozen. Chuck removed his scarf from his pocket, since he'd been too flushed to wear it on the race from Asher's, and wrapped it around her neck.

"I remember this."

"My signature."

"Why did you ever stop wearing it?"

"I first got to know you when you were grieving for your father. It wasn't appropriate to wear such a bright garment when you were so sad."

"Did you love me then?"

"I loved you very slowly, as a matter of fact. You kept setting it back by throwing tantrums over the silverware."

She bumped her nose against his, drew back her hand from a whining Monkey and gripped the collar of his coat. It was turned up against the wind and kept that next kiss, which was by no means the first or the last, private and perfect behind the heavy wool. Anyone could've guessed what they were doing, but no one, hand on heart, could claim to know the details. No one could remark on the symmetry with which they moved, knowing exactly which way to go and how long the breaths between should last. No one could crow to their friends that they'd caught Charles Bass – didn't he have a wife? – and Blair Waldorf – who they were certain was and would be a virgin forever – _French_ kissing, actually opening their mouths to one another, sitting as close together as was physically possible to be.

Hidden but not hiding, he stroked the nape of her neck. He touched his lips to her temple, tasted both salt and sweet. He kissed the dark slash of one eyebrow, the smooth curve of one cheek. In short, he explored her not in the conventional way, which was to kiss the mouth and go downwards from there, but went from left to right and feature to feature until it wasn't the cold causing her to shake.

"Still going to Paris?"

It was her leg that moved then, upwards in a rustle of skirts, her knee pressing lightly against his groin in erotic threat.

"You can't stop me." He had no doubt, of course, that she'd kick like a mule if roused; lucky for him that she was aroused instead, her pupils deep black pits and her mouth swollen and raspberry coloured, raspberry plump and expectant.

"About that fan dance…"

"Not a word. Not a single word."

* * *

><p><strong><em>Thanks to: <em>aliceeeebeth, Laura, SaturnineSunshine, chairilove, Maudie, Trosev, CaroDaria, Nikki999, MissJess13, Molly Dooker, thepluot, alissajackie, thegoodgossipgirl, 29cmk, Guest, lovetvtomuchxo _and everyone who got me to write this story after the events of the end of TVSOP. I would've given up long before now if it weren't for you._ **


	22. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

_And so it was, and so it went – and so it was used by society mamas like the monster under the bed __to chide their daughters – that Charles, who was better known as Charlie, who had made his money from coal and steel, and Clair, who had been born to hers, left New York together. Clair never got around to commandeering the ship, so perhaps it could be said that she was not a real pirate; to those who had known her all her life, however, the change was evident. Forever after, Clair got what she wanted rather than learning to want what she was given. Clair spoke frankly and curled her lip at those who did not deserve her approval. Clair gorged herself on life, which is the sort of thing which always seems unfair to those not in the position to do the same._

_It was far less a case of adaptation for Charlie, for his change had far more to do with contentment. Being happy threw Charlie's more noble qualities of character into sharp relief, and although it was impossible for the 'best' kind of people to forgive or forget his transgressions, those were not the sort of people Charlie cared to consort with in any case. He much preferred lazy Newport summers, the sight of Clair filtering through the slits of his partially open eyelids._

_That kind of courtship would become popular after a time. It would be called love to chase one another's tails inside the confines of a grand house, to duet upon the piano and to run away to foreign climes when all else failed. It had always existed, Charlie and Clair were by no means the first, but they made it acceptable in just the way they had never intended. They returned from France unmarried, they left for England unmarried. It was somehow acceptable._

_But marry, they would._

_And bloom, they would, like peonies in a hothouse._

_If their people had cast them out and their wealth had been taken away, would have made their love any less true? Dylan doubted it. In fact, as he strolled along the pavement of some European city with a bouquet of yellow roses for his wife oozing green juice onto his glove, he wondered: whose business was it who'd done what with whom in the winter of 1897?_

_Whose goddamn business was it anyway?_

– Excerpt from Within, the bestselling novel by Anonymous.

* * *

><p><strong><em>I think the true message of Gossip Girl is that people will always judge you - for how you dress, for who you date, for what you eat or don't - and no matter how you try, you can't stop them. The strength of the characters comes from overcoming this, from choosing their own happiness over what society, their parents, the world seems to want from them. There, social commentary over. Thanks to: <em>Laura, sassy991, alissa-jackie, aliceeeebeth, SaturnineSunshine, Nikki999, issabell, kauraREX, aliciasays, Krazy4Spike, lovetvtomuchxo, Me _and_ BellaB2010. _This was a million times more of a trial and tribulation than I thought it was going to be to write, but I will miss this world and these characters more than I can say. Thank you for reading._**


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